RIDLEY SCOTT SIGNS ON FOR “BLADE RUNNER 2″

Scott is a top-shelf filmmaker, the concept is sound and the source material as good as it gets. This one, unlike “Austin Powers 4,” feels right. The most positive aspect is that Scott apparently has a real fire in the belly for the project. He’s been fiddling with the original — director’s cuts, etc… — since the beginning of home video, which is a good sign the creative energy and inspiration are in plentiful supply.

Furthermore, Scott can do any picture he wants. He’s not some “auteur” on the downslide and desperate for a return to the glory days of yore. Translation: he’s doing this for all the right reasons: passion, love, creative energy…

Yep, this feels right.

On the other hand…

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Nothing so reinforces the essential integrity of the American character than another viewing of the American Classic, “From Here To Eternity.” Seen through contemporary eyes, it looks like an extended examination of Lt. Col Allen West’s entire experience with the Third Millennium American military.

The American rebels with a cause in “From Here To Eternity,” the heroes of that 1941, Pearl Harbor drama, are all, in some sense, a replica of Lt. Col. West. The Colonel’s individual freedom and individual integrity, his truth to himself and responsibility to his enlisted men were fulfilled in the clearest and most unswerving manner.

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In my opinion, he saved the lives of American servicemen and drew a line in the sand before the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, homicidal bully of Iran.

In the eyes of Col. West’s military superiors, he was considered the villain in “From Here To Eternity.”

To the contrary, he belongs with the characters played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra. Three distinctively American integrities.

Why was the Colonel singled out for an enforced “resignation”?

The collective bargaining and cronyism of the Third Millennium, American Army-at-War was seen spitting on its own best soldiers because of the New World Order’s increasingly Marxist agenda. (more…)

One of George Stevens’ filmmaking maxims was: “The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument.” Nowhere in his oeuvre is this more evident than in Shane, perhaps the most peculiarly cast A-grade Western in Hollywood history.

It all started with a memo from Paramount Studios, where the director was currently under contract: “Herewith story and treatment entitled Shane, which we would like you to consider for one of your two remaining pictures. . . This property is now being supervised by one of our studio producers, but no serious problem would be involved in re-assigning it to you, and we are prepared to do so if you like it. . .” Stevens did like it, and soon began reading both the novel and existing script, marking them up with marginal notes that contained the seeds of dialogue and shots that would go on to become immortal.

As packaged, the movie was set to star Alan Ladd, Paramount’s most popular star — only John Wayne eclipsed Ladd’s popularity in moviegoer polls during those heady years. But Stevens initially considered other options. Many of his jotted notes about the character of Shane referenced “Monty,” showing that Stevens was thinking of using Montgomery Clift, the young, tight-jawed brooder then appearing in the director’s tragic love story A Place in the Sun (1951). Gregory Peck was also in the running. Meanwhile, author Jack Schaefer wanted “a dark, deadly person” — someone more like tough-guy gangster actor George Raft — to portray his hero. For the part of Joe Starrett, the homesteader and father of the young boy, names like Broderick Crawford, Burt Lancaster, and William Holden were bandied about. (more…)

Editor’s Note: After the publication of this piece we made an internal discovery that this interview was not a one-on-one interview between our writer and Quentin Tarantino, and that some of the questions attributed to “Big Hollywood” were asked by other journalists in what was a roundtable interview.
 
Upon discovering this, we temporarily removed the piece from the site until all the facts were known and a proper correction could be added.

Quentin Tarantino exploded on the world film scene in 1992 with “Reservoir Dogs,” a brutally profane yet ingeniously plotted and often funny deconstruction of the heist-film genre. He took things to a whole other level in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction,” reviving the foundering careers of superstars John Travolta and Bruce Willis while launching the star careers of Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman while winning a Best Screenplay Oscar himself. 

Yet in the 15 years since that classic, Tarantino hasn’t been able to score quite as big an impact. 1997’s “Jackie Brown” made just $39 million, while the two “Kill Bill” films scored $70 million each yet were considered hyper-violent trifles compared to what he was really capable of. And he really bottomed out with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which made up half of “Grindhouse,” a three-hour homage to the trashy drive-in films of America’s past. Its 21st-century audience didn’t get the joke and largely ignored it, earning just $27 million at the US box office.  (more…)

Can you remember the last piece of film score that made you want to jump into the screen and join in on the action — that made you want to destroy an arch-villain’s volcano lair or swing into ship full of enemy pirates…? But of all the genres, there’s nothing quite like a  Big Western Score. The best are rousing, moody, flavorful… They drive a sense of danger and adventure into your innards and make you long to be a cowboy, which is no small achievement for someone like me who would rather spend a night in jail than outdoors.

Here are my 5 favorites in all their YouTube glory.

1. Dimitri Tomkin – Red River (1949): Sweeping, epic, majestic and impossible to believe never nominated for an Oscar. An important part of scoring is deciding where to put the music and ”Red River” has some of the best spotting choices I’ve ever seen. It kicks in precisely when it should, not just to enhance a moment, but also to change moods and start fresh. Watch the scene again where John Wayne (who’s absolutely brilliant in his most unsympathetic role) tells Montgomery Clift (every bit as good as Wayne) he’s gonna kill him. This is “the” moment in the film and you expect dark, melodramatic music, but when Clift walks away and gets on his horse the score soars with adventure completely changing the mood and stripping the melodrama from the moment. (more…)

In yesterday’s post about the third most popular movie star in America today, I referenced 6 John Wayne masterpieces and 12 classics. A few emails resulted asking which films that referred to, so here are the masterpieces ranked in order of masterpiecery.

These films don’t need anyone to defend them and thousands upon thousands of words have already been written about them. What you have here is a few paragraphs about each that focuses on what keeps me coming back time and again.

For the record, “The Searchers,” in my opinion, is the greatest movie ever made and though I don’t think John Wayne is our greatest actor (though, he’s in the top five), I do think his performance as Ethan Edwards is the finest ever captured on film. (more…)

7:30am PST - A Place in the Sun (1951) – An ambitious young man wins an heiress’s heart but has to cope with his former girlfriend’s pregnancy. Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere Dir: George Stevens BW-122 mins, TV-PG

When you hear the word “nuanced” from Hollywood today, dollars to donuts they mean “immoral,” as in, we’re going to appease some terrorists and sexualize young children and call it “sophisticated.” Whether they know it or not (and I think they do), those particular plot points don’t represent “subtle shades of meaning,” they represent appeasing terrorists and sexualizing young children. (more…)