Category: Movie

A Justice League giveaway; the story of silent film icon Harold Lloyd’s last role, The Matrix: Resurrections trailer goes down the rabbit hole, and Adam McKay enlists Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence to warn that the end is near. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

But First: We will not have a Rundown tomorrow, because of some things.

Enter to Win: To mark the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League on 4K Ultra HD, we have ten to give away. But you have to be signed up for this newsletter you’re reading for a chance to win. If you’re already signed up, thanks! Why not get someone in your household to sign up, so you can watch Justice League together? 

What Things Though: Just, you know, personal things. Everything’s fine.

Harold Lloyd’s Last Movie: In the latest episode of The Industry, host Dan Delgado tells the story of silent film and “talkie” star Harold Lloyd’s final film — a comedy that bears amusing similarities to 2009’s The Hangover.  This is a story that includes Howard Hughes, a secret tunnel to the Chateau Marmont, and much more. You can listen on Spotify, Apple, or here:

 

The Matrix: Resurrections Trailer: I have zero insights here (I can’t even remember which pill does what) but this trailer makes me want to see a movie I didn’t have much interest in before. It seems to step outside Matrix lore and have some fun with it, the way Nightmare on Elm Street 7 went all meta. Everyone remembers Nightmare on Elm Street 7, right? Wes Craven’s New Nightmare? Anyway here’s The Matrix: Resurrections trailer:

Where’s Laurence Fishburne? Is a thing many people on social media are asking. I’m sure one way or another, everything will be fine.

“Things”: Exactly.

Also, Wow: This shot right here.

White Rabbit: One of my favorite things about the Matrix: Resurrections trailer is that I never, ever, ever wanted to hear the Jefferson Airplane’s melodramatic “White Rabbit” ever again, but it works wonderfully in the context of the film’s San Francisco setting and our current vulnerability to internet rabbit holes, which feels very Matrix. The most newly resonant line: “When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.” And of course the lines about the pills.

Speaking of Logic and Proportion Falling Sloppy Dead: The new Adam McKay film Don’t Look Up, out on Netflix on Dec. 24, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as scientists trying to convince the world that a comet is coming to kill us all — and finding everyone has information fatigue. In a scene set in the White House, they warn the president (Meryl Streep) of the danger. “Do you know how many ‘the world is ending’ meeting we’ve had over the last two years?” she asks. An aide played by Jonah Hill chimes in: “Drought, famine, hole in the ozone. It’s so boring.” The cast includes Cate Blanchett, Ariana Grande, Timothee Chalomet, Tyler Perry and many more. Here you go:

Are You Going Somewhere Or Something?: I’ll be near Boston, Massachusetts, where Don’t Look Up was filmed. You can hear more about that from Adam McKay right here.

Attica: Indiewire has this interview with director Stanley Nelson, whose new film Attica marks the 50th anniversary of a bloody prison uprising that left 29 inmates and 10 hostages dead. The film premieres today at the Toronto International Film Festival and will air on Showtime. “Attica is a story that’s evergreen,” Nelson tells IndieWire. “We could have made the film at any time and the conversations would be the same, on mass incaceration, racial implications, and the need for reform. But it was good to look back at it 50 years later, and with new knowledge never released before.” Attica has also been the subject of past docs, and the very intense 1994 John Frankenheimer drama Against the Wall, with Kyle MacLachan, Samuel L. Jackson, and the late Clarence Williams III. And it was the subject of a 1980 TV movie starring Morgan Freeman.

Will You Be Back?: Of course! We love you very much and will be back with a new Rundown on Monday.

Have a Great Weekend and Be Careful Out There: I’ve shared this before, but here’s a scene from the jaw-dropping 1923 Harold Lloyd silent film “Safety Last.”

Main image: Keanu Reeves surrounded by new subscribers to the Rundown in The Matrix: Resurrection, learning that they have won Zack Snyder’s Justice League on 4K Ultra HD.

 

 

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What does Todd Phillips’ 2009 hit comedy The Hangover have in common with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, a 1947 movie about a man’s wild night out that ended the career of silent film star Harold Lloyd?

On the latest episode of The Industry podcast, host Dan Delgado delves into the history of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, an ill-fated picture written and directed by Preston Sturges that saw the end of a short-lived business partnership between Lloyd and billionaire philanthropist Howard Hughes.

It also shares some striking similarities with The Hangover. You can listen to this episode of The Industry podcast on Spotify, Apple, or above.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock was produced by both Hughes and Sturges through their production banner California Pictures, which they formed together in 1944. But the movie would bring about the end of their friendship and business partnership when they realized they couldn’t see eye-to-eye about its comedic tone.

After its premiere in 1947, Hughes pulled it from release and decided to make several edits and re-shoot some scenes, re-releasing a new version in 1950 with the title Mad Wednesday. It flopped. Lloyd never made another movie, marking the end of a long and mostly successful career which included dozens of popular silent films and “talkies” from as far back as 1913.

Also Read: How We Shot Edge of the World Amid Jungle, Floods and Crocodiles

Tom Sturges, the son of director Preston Sturges, said the first time he saw The Hangover he was immediately struck by all it had in common with Diddlebock.

“A brilliant film. Hilarious. But if you look deep into its DNA, you go, ‘Wow, this is so similar.’ Harold Lloyd wakes up to a lion, and he bought a circus — tell me two other movies where a guy wakes up with a lion in the next room or a tiger,” Sturges said. “It doesn’t happen… those are the only two. So, when I saw The Hangover and I loved it and laughed my ass off, I went, ‘This is the hidden twin sister of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock.”

Delgado spelled out all the similarities between the two films.

“While they are definitely very different pictures, in The Hangover, three guys get presumably blackout drunk and wake up in a Las Vegas hotel with a tiger in it, having no memory of the previous night, and have to retrace their steps in order to find their missing friend. Oh, and in the process, one of them discovers that he got married,” Delgado said. “In Diddlebock, Harold gets blackout drunk and wakes up with a lion in his house, having no memory of the previous night. He deals with the consequences of his drunken behavior, which includes a circus that he bought. Oh, and in the process, he also discovers that he got married.”

Reps for the writers of the first Hangover movie did not immediately respond to MovieMaker‘s request for comment about whether Diddlebock was an influence.

 

The post Here’s What a 1947 Movie About a Wild Night Out Has in Common With The Hangover appeared first on MovieMaker Magazine.

In making his feature film debut We Need to Do Something, director Sean King O’Grady struggled with when to follow his original vision, and when to compromise. The film, starring Sierra McCormick (The Vast of Night), Vinessa Shaw (Hocus Pocus) and Pat Healy (The Inkeepers), follows a family who become trapped after a storm. Soon the family’s teenage daughter, Melissa, realizes that she and her girlfriend may have had something to do with the horrors that threaten them all. In this piece, O’Grady  — who has also produced films including last year’s Sundance darling The Assistant — shares what he learned about blocking, setups — and making adjustments.

This is a story about embracing reality — sticking to your vision, obsessing over details, but not letting what you thought would be your movie get in the way of the conditions the universe presents you with.

In the midst of pandemic-mania 2020, a bunch of crazy people decided to join me in Michigan to make an extremely contained movie, while living in a self-imposed “bubble” consisting of our set, and our hotel. For over a month, no one would see the light of day. Miraculously, we all survived without murdering each other, and that movie has now been released by IFC, and is called We Need to Do Something.

But let’s back up a little… During pre-production, the incredible cinematographer Jean-Philippe Bernier and I spent a week shot-listing every scene in the movie. We were psychotically organized. Because most of our movie takes place in one location, a bathroom, we matched our spreadsheet shotlist to an overhead diagram of the location — for every single shot. We knew the motivation for each shot, the blocking we wanted the actors to perform, and how we could fit each shot and desired move into the tight schedule. We had one particular scene with 26 setups. For two pages of dialogue. In one room.

More on that later.

We had our cast come in a week before production was to begin, so that we could rehearse on our set together. However, I kept torturing our poor art department to get the set the way I wanted it, and due to this, the set wasn’t finished on time. As a result, we had to retreat to the basement of our office, tape out the dimensions of the bathroom on the floor, and rehearse that way.

I walked the actors through the blocking based on our shotlist — and immediately realized everything sucked.

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And not just a little. It sucked horribly. The blocking that made sense in my head was insane when you saw real people doing it. It was like a bad play. So after a half a day of trying to walk through each scene the way I envisioned it (because I saw Steven Spielberg do this on an Indiana Jones bonus feature — true story), I had a sidebar with Jean-Philippe and asked his opinion. He agreed with me, and I asked the actors just to forget everything I told them and act out the scene based on their feelings in the moment.

This. Changed. Everything.

The scenes came to life. I quit stomping around the non-set telling my extremely talented cast how to move, and started learning from them what actual humans would do in these situations. I started watching from the sidelines, seeing from the camera’s point of view, and having a fucking blast. I started to see my movie in a brand new way, and it was way better than what I’d envisioned.

So we re-shotlisted. The entire movie.

Okay: That’s not totally true. There were a few highly technical scenes where we needed some blocking that matched our original shotlist (more on this later… again) and the cast made it look incredible, despite being a little unnatural.

Now we had our movie. We planned it all out. Only one handheld scene in the bathroom, aside from the flashbacks, which were all handheld. It was written in stone and blood.

Before we knew it, the set was finished, and we started shooting. And everything changed. Again. Blocking without walls is not the same as blocking with walls. But this time, we knew this was a moment for excitement, a chance to make things even better again. We embraced the change. And the movie got better.

We were extremely fortunate to have our editor, and writer, on set. And they edited everything we shot as we shot it — chronologically. Each night, we got to see the assembly of that day’s footage, and could then tweak the shot list and script based on how we all felt about the edit.

Days were going well and everything was coming together. But our 26-setup effects-heavy scene was starting to become a source of stress. It was a week away, but we were very concerned it could become a 24-hour shoot day. I’m not joking.

Then something happened. We shot our one planned handheld sequence. And we loved it. I knew immediately our 26-setup scene should be a much simpler handheld sequence. The energy would simply be better. But I didn’t want to feel like I was compromising. Yes, I’m a petulant child (like most of you reading this probably are) who refused to make his life easier, simply because I didn’t want to feel like I was compromising. I was willing to compromise the quality of the scene, and the sanity of the entire team, to not “compromise” my original vision. Mind you, I had successfully avoided this trap twice while making this film! Had I learned nothing? From myself?

We rode out this stress for another 10 days. Then finally, the day before we shot the sequence, our core team came together, and we all felt the same way. The handheld wasn’t a compromise. It was an improvement. We made the call. We did it. And to this day I love it.

The moral of this story is: Don’t worry about compromising your vision. You’re not going to do that. You came this far to get a movie made. Compromise isn’t in your DNA. However, leaving your mind open to the idea that evolving your vision to the reality that the universe presents to you can be extremely liberating, and will make your film better.

Now go make something.

We Need to Do Something, directed by Sean King O’Grady, is now in theaters and available on digital and VOD, from IFC Midnight.

Main image: Sean King O’Grady on the set of We Need to Do Something.

The post The Director of We Need to Do Something Needs to Say Something About Compromise appeared first on MovieMaker Magazine.

In today’s Movie News Rundown: R.I.P Eastbound & Down co-creator Ben Best; Werner Herzog’s advice on just doing it; a Hawkeye trailer for Christmas; Queen’s Gambit wins at the Creative Arts Emmys; The Card Counter is great.

Clint Eastwood on Aging: “I don’t look like I did at 20, so what?” the 91-year-old tells The Los Angeles Times in a profile pegged to his new film, Cry Macho. “That just means there are more interesting guys you can play.”

Recommendation: Saw Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter in a theater this weekend, and the writer of Taxi Driver and writer-director of American Gigolo is as good as ever. Try to go in knowing nothing. Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe star. That’s all I’m saying. Okay, also, there are cards in it.

More Recommendations, from TIFF: So far I’ve seen Dashcam, Attica, and The Jockey though virtual Toronto International Film Festival Screenings. Dashcam, a horror film that unfolds through pandemic England via a dashboard camera, made me think about how some filmmakers treat COVID protocols like a new kind of Dogme 95. Dashcam isn’t one of them.

Creative Arts Emmys: Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, written and directed by Scott Frank and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, led at the Creative Arts Emmys, scoring nine awards for casting, cinematography, costumes, editing, makeup, production design, score, sound editing and sound mixing. The Mandalorian had seven Emmys, and RuPaul’s Drag Race won five. Here’s the full list of winners from all three of the awards ceremonies.

Advice From Werner Herzog: Nick Fituri Scown, co-director of the new documentary Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11, shares some advice he took from Werner Herzog: Stop telling people you’re thinking of making a movie, and start telling them you’re making a movie.

The Marvel Christmas Spectacular: The new Disney+ show Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner as the least powerful Avenger and Hailee Steinfeld as young archer Kate Bishop, will be a Christmas story. (The tagline on the poster is, “This holiday season, the best gifts come with a bow.”) The show also features a Broadway musical about former Captain America Steve Rogers. Here’s the Hawkeye trailer.

Do You Like Comics? If so, the collections Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life As A Weapon and Hawkeye Vol. 2: Little Hits, by Matt Fraction and David Aja, are some of the best I’ve read, in terms of art, story, and flair. They collect issues 1-11 of the Hawkeye comic book series that looks to be a big influence on the Disney+ show. The issues were known for groundbreaking, understated storytelling — especially the issue told entirely from the POV of a dog.

R.I.P. Ben Best: The Eastbound & Down co-creator died yesterday at 46. “It’s with heavy hearts we say goodbye to our good buddy Ben Best,” Rough House Pictures posted on  Instagram. “We lost him the day before he would have turned 47. A hell of a friend and a creative force. He inspired us and made us laugh. Charming and hilarious. Gone way too soon. We love and miss you.” Rough House is run by Best’s friends and frequent collaborators Danny McBride, David Gordon Green and Jody Hill. Best co-wrote and co-starred in The Foot Fist Way with McBride and Hill, who directed. They later teamed up on Eastbound & Down, in which Best played hard-partying bartender Clegg. He also co-wrote Your Highness with McBride and acted in films including Land of the Lost, Superbad and Observe and Report. “RIP Ben Best. I remember seeing him as Chuck The Truck in Foot Fist Way and thinking ‘I have to work with this man,’” wrote former co-star Seth Rogen. “I’m honored I got work with him, and even more so and that I got to hang out with him and just be in his company. Watch Foot Fist Way today and bask in his genius.” No cause of death was given.

Main image: Ben Best as Chuck “The Truck” Wallace in The Foot Fist Way.

 

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In Dashcam, a new horror film that just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, a MAGA-hatted social media provocateur named Annie Hardy breaks quarantine in Los Angeles to travel to the UK, where she mistakenly believes life will be more relaxed.

Soon after she arrives, she encounters something much worse than COVID-19. It all plays out on the dashboard camera she uses to communicate with fans who tune in to watch her perform freestyle songs as she drives.

Dashcam is the latest of many low-budget films produced during COVID-19 lockdowns, and feels like a step forward. It plays more like a frantic Blair Witch than a socially distanced slow burn. Its British director, Rob Savage, and his co-writers, Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, previously collaborated on another pandemic horror film, last year’s streaming success Host.

Some COVID movies wear their logistical limitations as a badge of honor, as if COVID protocols were a variation on Dogme 95. Others simply pretend COVID didn’t exist, and artfully shoot around the limitations without drawing attention to the added effort involved.

Dashcam wisely uses the lockdowns as a backdrop and then pivots in a completely different and giddily gross direction. It has gruesomely great set pieces, especially in a lake, a funhouse, and an un-fun house. The hand-or-dash-held camera moves constantly, making us really work to understand what’s going on — except in scenes where it falls eerily, effectively still.

The film mercifully avoids any sanctimony about pandemic protocols, and instead steps back to  just note the weirdness of this moment, especially in a scene where a restaurateur who is wearing his mask wrong (his nose is exposed, so what’s the point, really) becomes more and more furious at Annie for being unmasked.

Also Read: Spree Director Eugene Kotlyarenko Wrote All 7,000 Internet Comments That Appear in the Film

Annie Hardy is played by the real Annie Hardy, an L.A. musician who really did start livestreaming a dash cam show a few years ago in which she freestyles songs based on short suggestions from her viewers. The Annie Hardy in the film seems to be an outsized, more outrageous version of Annie Hardy in real life. It’s never clear if she’s an actual Trump supporter or just someone who likes the outrage she gets from wearing her Make America Great Again hat in public. But the character in the film shares the former president’s dismissiveness toward masks, and some of his followers’ belief that COVID is a hoax.

Annie-in-the-film is MAGAnificently unlikeable — rude, gross, hypocritical, selfish. One recent review of the film called her “the worst person on Earth.” (The real Annie is much more sympathetic — she has suffered unfathomable loss in recent years, including the loss of her infant son and her boyfriend, Robert Paulson, a rapper known as Cadalack Ron.)

You could read the film as a British criticism of a certain kind of American. But no matter how we feel about Annie, Dashcam wittily exploits the fact that we as audiences end up rooting for whomever occupies the frame the most, even if they have a tendency to do things like spitting in their hands and then slapping sleeping friends awake.

The poor awakened friend is played by Amar Chadha-Patel, whose character’s nickname, Stretch, may or may not be inspired by grotesque behavior he was known for when he and Annie were bandmates back in L.A. When Annie arrives in the UK, she clashes immediately with Stretch’s masked, sanitized girlfriend, played by Jemma Moore, and messes up Stretch’s job as a food delivery driver with her rejection of basic politeness or respect.

But then she stumbles into a job delivering a masked, obviously sick woman named Angela (Angela Enahoro) to a distant locale, and bodily fluids begin appearing in very unwelcome ways, and soon she Annie and Stretch are hunted by… something.

Internet commenters leave a speedy Greek chorus of comments as they watch, sometimes saying what we as viewers are thinking, and sometimes going to very dark places. The device was used to even better effect in last year’s terrific Spree, directed Eugene Kotlyarenko, which also involved social media, a car and lots of carnage. The running commentary is one of many places where Dashcam drops homages and inside jokes, including one commenter saying “you’ve got red on you,” a reference to Edgar Wright’s 2004 zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead.

Provocations abound. Annie rolls her eyes at Black Lives Matter signs, and Angela is Black, as many of the commenters point out. It’s unclear whether there’s some symbolism here, but let’s just say that Annie doesn’t learn any valuable lessons.

Dashcam is now playing at the Toronto International Film Festival.

 

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