Director David Fincher and two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey are ready to change the way we think about Netflix – and the TV landscape at large.

The pair are teaming up for the new political thriller “House of Cards,” a 13-episode series created specifically for Netflix. Spacey will star and produce the show, while Fincher (“The Social Network”) will share producing credits and direct the pilot episode. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley announced today the show will start shooting in his state starting this spring.

The series is based on the novel and British miniseries of the same name dealing with political ambition and intrigue.

Media consumers won’t have to wait much longer to sample the kind of original fare Netflix has in mind as it broadens its content base.

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Writer/director J.C. Chandor makes the kind of debut that assures we’ll be seeing more from him, and that’s a very good thing. Part “Wall Street,” part “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Margin Call” takes us back to 2008, just before the economic collapse, and throws a dozen or so terrific actors into a situation where, over the course of one very long night, they will face the end of their world as they know it — and an impossible choice.

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Things are already bad at the 107 year-old Manhattan-based investment firm, bad enough that specialists who know how to manage those being unceremoniously laid off have been brought in to do just that. Eric (Stanley Tucci) works in risk management and has been with the company 19 years. Today he’s been given six months severance at half pay and a humiliating escort out the door. Before he reaches the lobby, his passwords have changed and his company phone’s been shut off. Before Eric leaves, though, he hands a thumb drive to one of his young protégés who wasn’t let go, Peter (Zachary Quinto), a 28 year-old Ph.D. graduate who decided to trade in the opportunity to be an actual rocket scientist for the money and action on “The Street.”

Thinking the worst is over after the layoffs, those who remain are able to exhale and get back to the business of buying and selling. But this is just the beginning. After work, Peter opens Eric’s thumb drive and discovers that his mentor was close to finishing a risk assessment report on the firm’s current holdings.  Curious, Peter finishes the report and is horrified to learn that the kind of worst case scenario no one ever dreams of is not only possible but inevitable.

To be sure his calculations are correct, Peter calls Seth (Peter Badgely) , a 23 year-old hollow man-child obsessed with money, and Will (Paul Bettany), a senior trader who could walk out of a mine field without mussing up his hair, back into the office only to have them confirm that the sky is indeed falling.

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Occupy Wall Street types seemed like the perfect audience for “Margin Call,” a film which shows some of the fiscal sleight of hand that factored into the 2008 financial crisis.

Not so fast, says “Margin Call” writer/director J.C. Chandor.

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Not only does the film refuse to paint all Wall Street denizens as cold-hearted villains, it shows that money isn’t always the driving factor in foul financial decisions.

“The situation is far more complicated than quote, unquote greed. Careers are on the line, people’s self worth,” Chandor tells Big Hollywood. “It’s beyond monetary gain.”

The film, which nabbed two Independent Spirit Award nominations (Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay), is now available via Blu-ray, DVD and digital download from Lions Gate.

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‘Margin Call’ begins like ‘Up in the Air,’ chronicling the downturn of the U.S. economy through the perspective of a human interest story. It tells the tale of a financial firm that realizes belatedly that it’s holding onto too much leverage when the economy starts to falter.

Instead of taking a broad look at the financial crisis of 2008, ‘Margin Call’ focuses on one company and takes place over the period of twenty four hours. Written and directed by J.C. Chandor, the film features a huge cast, so it’s often difficult to determine who the main character is. If there is a key player, it’s the company that employs most of the other characters–a firm that stands on the brink of collapse.

Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a risk management officer, is one of the firm’s first casualties. He loses his job early on when the company is forced to downsize. Before he is escorted out of the office, Eric hands former underling Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) a disk showing an formula that he’s been working on to assess the company’s financial well-being. When Peter digs deep into future projections for the firm, he discovers that the company has dramatically over-leveraged itself with mortgage-bundled securities.

What starts out as a small discovery from a low-level employee quickly turns into something more. The revelation leads to meetings with managers, supervisors and eventually the head of the company. As the meetings move from one office to another one and from one floor to another, managers played by Simon Baker, Kevin Spacey, and Jeremy Irons are slowly introduced. (more…)

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Politico:

The video stars Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as part of the foundation’s celebrity division, pumping out ideas like not breathing to save the environment. There’s even a cameo from Bubba at the end.

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Early on in “Horrible Bosses,” a manager named Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) looks condescendingly at one of his employees and says, “I own you.” That remark summarizes the three main employer-employee relationships in this new comedy about three bosses who enjoy abusing members of their staff and the employees who want them dead. Although “Bosses” is wise enough to give credit to predecessors “Strangers on a Train” and “Throw Momma from the Train,” it isn’t smart enough to create the raunchy richness of this year’s earlier hit, “Bridesmaids.”

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The three mistreated employees in this story are Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), Dale Arbus (Charie Day) and Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis). Harken, Nick’s boss, is a psychotic manager who openly mocks and threatens his employees. Meanwhile, dental assistant Dale is being sexually harassed by his boss, Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) while Kurt, who works at a chemical company, is often mistreated by his boss, a demented cokehead named Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell). The three men eventually conspire to have their bosses murdered with the assistance of a ex-convict that they meet at a local bar (Jamie Foxx).

The logic of their plan is that each man will kill the other man’s boss, thus throwing off the police. This formula was used before as both a drama (“Strangers”) and a comedy (“Throw”).  There’s even a scene where the three employees openly discuss and give homage to those earlier films, although one of the characters doesn’t seem to know the difference between the two.

However, there is one major problem with the plot. Dale’s boss seems to be the only dentist who was willing to hire him because of Dale’s previous conviction as a sex offender, a conviction he received after going to the bathroom in a children’s playground after hours. Although Dale wants to keep his job as a dental assistant, he also wants his boss murdered. However, if his boss is killed, he wouldn’t have a job anymore. Dale doesn’t seem to take this into consideration.

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Our buddy Kyle Smith points out that the Daily Beast has made a laughably pathetic attempt to gin up some controversy over a line from the movie “Horrible Bosses,” which is in theaters today.  From NewsBeast’s Ramin Setoodeh:

In the new comedy Horrible Bosses, Jennifer Aniston plays an overbearing dentist named Julia who tortures her assistant Dale (Charlie Day) by sexually harassing him. She’s one of three managers (along with Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey) meant to be so detestable that their underlings plot to murder them. She constantly corners Dale, asking him to perform lewd sexual acts. In one scene, Aniston’s character calls him into her office, wearing nothing but a white lab coat. When he expresses discomfort, she taunts him like a high-school bully. “You’re starting to sound like a little faggot there, Dale,” she says.

[...]

It just doesn’t get any better than a couple of super-wealthy Hollywood celebrities, in a fit of self-importance, running around Capitol Hill demanding taxpayers foot the bill for their pet projects – in this case, $167 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. We are broker than broke and already saddling future generations with trillions in unpaid debt, and rather than do the decent thing and hold a Hollywood fundraiser to raise this cash, these two are demanding we pay for it.

Can you imagine the goodwill Hollywood would engender if they were to stand up as an industry and say:

“You know what, America? We got this. We understand what’s happening in this country. We understand you’re already over-taxed and worried about the deficit. And while we realize $167.5 million in the face of trillions isn’t a whole lot, it is something we as an industry can cover. We call on Congress to cut this from the budget and assure the NEA this town will plug that funding hole with our own money.”

My guess is that just a tenth of the profits from “Avatar” could make up the funding gap. But they will never do it for three reasons:

1. It’s the decent thing to do and therefore not in them.
2. They need a reason to run around Capitol Hill feeling important.
3. They get a sick thrill knowing we’re paying for bullwhips in butts.

Variety:

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Nothing like gajillionaires Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey demanding the working class fund their pet projects. How is this different than if the dreaded Koch Bros. asked the government to subsidize polo lessons? Well, what’s different is that the media would rightfully laugh the Koch Bros. off the stage even as they take Spacey’s nonsense seriously:

The Wrap:

Kevin Spacey credited federally funded arts programs for his successful career and called for the federal government to continue its support for public arts programs.

The Academy Award-winning actor made his remarks Monday at the 24th annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Spacey delivered the speech to a coalition of organizations who are in the to the nation’s capitol this week to participate in Arts Advocacy Day.

He related his own story of growing up as a child from South Orange, New Jersey, from a modest background with a lack of self-confidence. He got a major boost at age 13 when he was asked to perform a scene in a play and actor Jack Lemmon praised his performance and encouraged young Spacey to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

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Former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his 80th birthday with a bash in London on Wednesday.  And celebrities were out in force to glorify the life of a dictator.  Tickets went as high as $160,000. Talk about surreal: the co-hosts were Sharon Stone and and Kevin Spacey.  Entertainment was provided by the aging rock bank The Scorpions. Sporty Spice of the Spice Girls (now Mel C) also showed up.

It was all wrapped around the theme “Mikhail Gorbachev: The Man Who Changed the World.”  The Moscow Times reports that Spacey and Stone were, err, “cheesy.”  Standing in front of neo-classical columns “decorated with pink curtains,”  the two co-hosts “continuously mangled various Russian names and concepts.”  Stone (who they described as “ditzy”) went through a number of dress changes and Spacey tried to crack a joke about perestroika that was, well, “mangled.”    In between The Scorpions sang their songs “Wind of Change”  and later “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” Spandex anyone?

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Ted Turner was given an award.  Then came a Russian pop group named Khor Turetskogo singing the old black spiritual,  ”Go Down Moses.”  Strange choice if you are celebrating the birthday of an atheist,  don’t you think? You can’t make this stuff up.

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It’s okay, I wouldn’t remember me either.

Why it’s a left-wing film

Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty” opens high above a beautiful American suburb as though the idea is to watch the first-time director pick from at random any perfect-looking American family living in any perfect-looking American home located on any perfect-looking American street in order to make the case that the price of buying into the stifling, conformist American Dream is dysfunction, desperation, and depression.

Furthermore, the only sin in this story is hypocrisy and we know this because it’s only hypocrites who suffer and who are unhappy; those fools who bought into the lie that hard work, sexual restraint, military duty, love of country, status, money, and manicured lawns mean something. On the other hand, it’s those who openly flaunt the norms of society who have been granted the reward of inner peace. This includes Jim and Jim, the openly gay couple who live down the block and Ricky Fitts, the dope-smoking, drug dealing, emo vegetarian able to see through all the suburban phoniness and experience the real beauty available to anyone with the courage to remove the blinders; the elegance of a plastic bag blowing in the wind or the smile of contentment on the face of a man who’s just had his brains blown out.

Because the American Dream is — like the Matrix — the enemy and antagonist of our story, a hero is required to show the rest of us the way out, a Neo who will bravely struggle against all the Agent Smiths dispatched from the Matrix (moral standards, corporate America, status-driven wives, and ultimately guns owned by the insecure) to break free from its insidious hold. Enter Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a husband, father and cubicle drone who lives in nothing less than a red, white and blue McMansion and, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, has no idea when he finally surrendered to The Depression or became the kind of man whose day is all downhill after his morning masturbatory session.

But something’s happening to Lester, something dangerous to the Matrix American Dream.

Lester is becoming self aware. (more…)

[Editor's Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there's been an Internet. Therefore it's no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.]

The script, formerly titled Bagman, has been retitled Casino Jack, perhaps in candor or maybe hope, as the structure echoes Martin Scorsese’s masterwork Casino.  That film’s narrative structure, the film noir plot which begins near the end, with voice over by the protagonist in an ambiguous time warp, then rewinds to skip around in the plot back to the earlier scene, is replicated in Casino Jack.  Such imitation is revealing, as Scorsese’s Casino gives us nothing less than the essence of an era, the golden age of Las Vegas, before it is destroyed by the characters we follow, Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, Nicky Santoro, Ginger, and the old-time mob, through failures of limits, trust, growth, and awareness, to be overtaken by corporate ownership.  

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Casino Jack harbors similar aspirations, the essence of an era, in this case ostensibly the Bush II era.  But it is the “Republican Revolution” that Casino Jack targets, and after beginning with the Washington Post exposure and bust of the fictional “Jack Abramoff” and the murder of “Gus Boulis,” we discover the 21 year old Jack rooted in 1980, a college Republican riding in a campaign limo with “Ronald Reagan” himself, who counsels Jack: never surrender; there are no constraints on the human mind; no walls around the human spirit; no barriers to our progress except those we erect ourselves; the family is everything; all great changes in America begins around the dinner table.  This is Casino Jack’s foundational Reaganite wisdom, though Reagan will return and give Jack a cryptic warning, too late, about idealism. 

This Jack is an agent of smashmouth capitalism. Early on we see him busted in his Gulfstream wearing a $1000 Armani suit.  He is the son of a “Rat Pack” former Diners Club president now retired to Palm Springs, raised in Beverly Hills, and has become a superstar Washington lobbyist representing Indian tribes’ gambling interests.  Jack also invests, through homeboy “Adam Kidan” (think Joe Pesci’s Nicky Santoro) in Florida offshore gambling boats and owns a fancy restaurant in DC.  He represents the Northern Mariana Islands, where his Congressman friend vacations, entertained by a “nubile young Asian woman,”  and which manufactures “in the rag trade” under “Made in USA” labels, not subject to US labor law.  It is an increasingly murky, tragic saga of greedy Republican financial chicanery.  When things unravel, a partner at Jack’s firm compares the whole debacle to Enron.     (more…)

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The timing couldn’t be more perfect because tomorrow Big Hollywood will run Edward Azlant’s Sucker Punch Squad review of Kevin Spacey’s “Casino Jack,” which hits theatres December 12th.

Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey stars as disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in “Casino Jack,” a new film directed by George Hickenlooper (who tragically just passed away at the very young age of 47 — RIP), and spoke with our friends at CNS News about the issue of lobbying. While I appreciate Spacey’s apolitical approach, there’s no tone of voice reasonable-sounding enough to sell anyone on this truly horrible idea:

“I think if network television started to agree to run legitimate ads that you knew were true, if you’re going to say something about a rival, it can’t just be dirt. I think if they started to run these ads for free and were a part of being a public service, well then maybe some of this corruption, some of this insistence on raising ridiculous amounts of money, primarily for television ads would go away and maybe we would start electing people on ideas instead of on how much money they had in their coffers.”

Good grief, can you imagine allowing television networks — or anyone — to be the ultimate deciders regarding which political ads are and are not legitimate?  First off, it’s not hard to look a little into the future and see the corruption reversing itself where you now have politicians lobbying big business to get their ads approved. Secondly, the idea of left-wing television networks, networks like NBC that already offer up untold millions in in-kind contributions with liberal programming and “Green Weeks,” enjoying the imperial power to give Democrats huge cash advantages through the legitimizing of leftist ads, running them for free, and delegitimizing Republican ads, is a nightmare scenario of Orwellian proportions.  (more…)

While Kevin Spacey’s TV work in the late 1980’s was certainly impressive, in movies he never seemed to connect with audiences. That is until 1992, when he began gathering steam with a great turn in James Foley’s screen adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” In a movie filled with strong performances, Spacey takes on a role that is arguably the toughest and least showy. In a movie filled with great lines, his exasperated plea to one of the salesmen, “Will you go to lunch? GO to lunch. WILL YOU? Go to LUNCH!”, is a great example of an actor being in perfect sync with every nuance of the  material.

In 1994, the greatest year ever, he appeared in three films, whose grosses range from $377K to $21M. I didn’t see the highest grosser of the bunch, “Iron Will,” but the other two, “Swimming With Sharks*” and “The Ref,” signaled Spacey’s impending arrival as a star.

Ted Demme’s “The Ref,” is a small studio movie about a cat burglar (Denis Leary in full MTV sarcastic rant mode) who takes an unhappy couple (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) hostage on Christmas Eve, and finds himself having to referee their vitriolic shouting matches. As Spacey was not yet a star, the movie’s hook was Denis Leary, who was also not a star, but one gets the feeling it was supposed to be his “48 Hrs.” (more…)

***UPDATE: I just received a very, very nice email from the film’s sales agents asking me (and everyone else who posted it — it’s everywhere) to pull the trailer (it leaked and is not the final trailer) and let everyone know that here in the states the film will retain the title “Casino Jack.” I’ve also edited the title of this post to reflect that change.

Directed by George Hickenlooper (awesome name) and starring Kevin Spacey and Kelly Preston, “Bagman” (formerly titled “Casino Jack”) is scheduled to hit theatres October 1 and represents Hollywood’s second look at the “true story” of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The first was the documentary “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” which made no money earlier this year.

This new trailer, with all the voice over, rising and falling, and iconic but overused rock songs, is obviously trying to throw off a “Casino/Goodfellas” vibe. We’ll see. And we’ll see how fair it is too, won’t we? We’ll see if the word “Democrat” is used even less than “Reagan” was in “Charlie Wilson’s Liberal Revisionist Fantasy.”

What would be most helpful, though, is if Big Hollywood could get an advance look at the script. This would allow us to, uhm, (how do the libs put it?) – oh, yeah – blow the whistle one way or the other before hard-working Americans plunk down hard-earned money for something selling itself as an inside look at DC power and corruption when it might really be nothing more than just another piece of leftist Hollywood lies and propaganda. (more…)

A great performance sticks with you long after you’ve scraped the theater floor-gum off your Keds.  But too often, professional drama geeks and mainstream media critics will bestow their blessing on freaky, idiosyncratic performances that hew to the party line *(cough) Heath Ledger (cough) Brokeback Mountain (cough)*, leaving the rest of us to scratch our collective heads.  If that was good, we wonder, how bad do you have to be to be bad?

What follows is a list of the Top 10 performances of the last quarter century.  It focuses on lead roles, or at least substantial ones – no cameos, thank you.  Interestingly, there are no straight comic performances here, and many of the roles are villains.  And it is also focused on movies people have actually heard of. 

So, this is not an exhaustive list – it overlooks plenty of great performances.  But it is my list and based on my criteria alone – and I’m sure I’ll hear about my myriad defects of insight, taste, breeding and general mental competence in the comments.  For example, Daniel Day Lewis is missing because I decided not to invest three hours into There Will Be Blood (2007) since after seeing the “I drink your milkshake!” clip I just can’t take it seriously.  (more…)

With a cold, foreboding atmosphere and perfect pacing, director Duncan Jones’ impressive feature debut, “Moon,” immediately sweeps you up in its existential look at the human condition of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a mining engineer on the dark side of the moon with only two weeks to go on a three-year stint spent in almost total isolation.

In what’s pretty much a one-man show, Rockwell’s superb as an ordinary man counting down the days until his flight home to a wife he misses more with each passing minute and a daughter born just before his shift began. Due to technical problems, he can’t communicate in real-time with anyone, including his loved ones and the people who run the company he works for. The long delay between each space transmission only serves to increase Sam’s feeling of disconnect and loneliness — and the strain’s starting to show. Every day he looks as though his very lifeforce is draining from him and the hallucinations have begun. (more…)

Over the weekend, I was pondering why the low budget, standard genre pic The Haunting in Connecticut (Lionsgate) has become a nifty little box office hit. The film added almost $9.5M over the weekend for a new 10-day cume of $37M, and the only conclusion I have been able to reach is that it’s all about the poster.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

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Richard Dreyfuss and Elizabeth McGovern have travelled across the pond to star in a play about America’s torture of terrorist suspects.  That’s right, not “alleged” torture. It’s a fact as far as this play is concerned.  And, the funny thing about the Variety review is that the fact that the whole world knows that America is guilty of torture undermines the effect of the play: 

The terrible timing is not Kevin Spacey’s fault: He couldn’t have known “Complicit” — U.S. dramatist Joe Sutton’s fictional indictment of his country’s possible condoning of torture and rendition — would premiere after President Obama had taken steps to dismantle that practice.

Clips of a TV interview with real-life BBC senior political commentator Andrew Marr provide details of Ben’s inflammatory publication, none of which can be news to British audiences with even a cursory knowledge of Guantanamo and other widely exposed scandals. (more…)