50 Cent Working on New Film

Hip-Hop Wired posted this short piece on Curtis Jackson AKA 50 Cent's efforts in the film world.

This is how the post begins: As the rap career of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson continues to slowly fizzle into obscurity...

Apparently the rapper/actor has begun work on a new film currently entitled "Things Fall Apart," which he will also produce and co-writer.  Directed by Mario Van Peebles, the film will feature Fitty as a football player.

Review: Ichabod Rocks Disney's "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 6 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) – animated
Running time: 68 minutes
DIRECTORS: Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, and James Algar
WRITERS: Homer Brightman, Winston Hibler, Erdman Penner, Harry Reeves, and Joe Rinaldi (based on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving)
PRODUCER: Walt Disney
EDITOR: John O. Young
Golden Globe winner

ANIMATION/FANTASY/ACTION/COMEDY/FAMILY

Starring: (voices) Bing Crosby, Basil Rathbone, Eric Blore, J. Pat O’Malley, Colin Campbell, Campbell Grant, Claud Allister, and The Rhythmaires

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was the last of Walt Disney’s “package films,” which were films comprised of two or more animated short subjects instead of a single feature-length story (such as Bambi).

The first short feature, “The Adventures of Mr. Toad” is based on Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel, The Wind in the Willows, an acknowledged classic of children’s literature. J. Thaddeus Toad (Eric Blore), the proprietor of Toad Hall, is in deep financial straights because of his spendthrift ways regarding whatever fad he’s chasing, and he also starts spending much of his time with a wastrel horse named Cyril Proudbottom (J. Pat O’Malley). His latest obsession is “motor mania,” the desire to have a car. When his fixation lands him in prison, it’s up to Mr. Toad’s friends, Mole (Colin Campbell), Water Rat (Claud Allister), and Angus MacBadger (Campbell Grant) to save him.

The second story, “Ichabod Crane,” is based upon Washington Irving’s classic American short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” first published in 1820 and later contained in his story collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Bing Crosby narrates and sings the story of itinerate schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, who arrives in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York to be the new schoolmaster in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod falls in love with Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of the wealthiest of the local farmers, much to the chagrin of her other suitor, Brom Bones. Brom decides that he needs to scare Ichabod off, so near the end of the Van Tassel’s annual Halloween ball, he tells the tale of The Headless Horseman that haunts Sleepy Hollow. After leaving the party, Crane, who is deeply superstitious, has a wild encounter with the Horseman… or does he.

Although not considered to be one of the very best Walt Disney animated features, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad has some of the most beautiful color seen in animated films. It’s all practically applied and not just for the sake of being pretty; in fact, the film won a 1950 Golden Globe for “Best Cinematography, Color.” While the Mr. Toad segment is very nice (and features beautiful character and set designs), the treat here is, of course, Ichabod Crane. What makes it better is Bing Crosby, whose narration and singing give Ichabod Crane color and warmth.

As strange as it may sound, this short segment (which runs less than 35 minutes) features some of the best animation Disney ever did. Talk about the art of animation: the characters move flawlessly in a symphony of movement that is an exercise in mathematical precision. The sequence that begins when Ichabod enters Sleepy Hollow until the end of his race with the Headless Horseman should make any shortlist of all time great action sequences in animated films. It’s scary (as scary as I remember it as child), and a great example of something Disney did well in their classic animated movies – create an atmosphere of fear.

The color, the sound, and the motion: even this work considered a minor affair shows that when Disney animators were at the height of their powers, they were really up there. Actually, there’s an action sequence at the end of Mr. Toad that would be considered the best work by any other animation studio. Still, it pales next to the chase in Ichabod, and that’s what makes The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad essential Disney.

8 of 10
A

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

NOTES:
1950 Golden Globes: 1 win: Best Cinematography – Color

-------------------------

List of Winners at the BAFTA Awards 2010

2009 WINNERS (presented in 2010):


BEST FILM
THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
FISH TANK Kees Kasander, Nick Laws, Andrea Arnold

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
DUNCAN JONES Director – Moon

DIRECTOR
THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
THE HURT LOCKER Mark Boal

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
UP IN THE AIR Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
A PROPHET Pascal Caucheteux, Marco Cherqui, Alix Raynaud, Jacques Audiard

ANIMATED FILM
UP Pete Docter

LEADING ACTOR
COLIN FIRTH A Single Man

LEADING ACTRESS
CAREY MULLIGAN An Education

SUPPORTING ACTOR
CHRISTOPH WALTZ Inglourious Basterds

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
MO’NIQUE Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

MUSIC
UP Michael Giacchino

CINEMATOGRAPHY
THE HURT LOCKER Barry Ackroyd

EDITING
THE HURT LOCKER Bob Murawski, Chris Innis

PRODUCTION DESIGN
AVATAR Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Kim Sinclair

COSTUME DESIGN
THE YOUNG VICTORIA Sandy Powell

SOUND
THE HURT LOCKER Ray Beckett, Paul N. J. Ottosson

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
AVATAR Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones

MAKE UP & HAIR
THE YOUNG VICTORIA Jenny Shircore

SHORT ANIMATION
MOTHER OF MANY Sally Arthur, Emma Lazenby

SHORT FILM
I DO AIR James Bolton, Martina Amati

THE ORANGE RISING STAR AWARD (voted for by the public)
KRISTEN STEWART

Academy Fellowship: Vanessa Redgrave

Outstanding British Contribution to Film: Joe Dunton

[END]

Shutter Island New York City Premiere (Photo)

Eager fans mob Leonardo DiCaprio and his lady at the NYC premiere of Shutter Island, the new #1 movie in America.

Review: "About a Boy" is Warm and Fuzzy

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 90 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux


About a Boy (2002)
Running time: 101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for brief strong language and some thematic elements
DIRECTORS: Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz
WRITERS: Peter Hedges and Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz (from a novel by Nick Hornsby)
PRODUCERS: Robert De Niro, Brad Epstein, Eric Fellner, and Jane Rosenthal
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Remi Adefarasin (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Nick Moore
Academy Award nominee

COMEDY/DRAMA

Starring: Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Nicholas Hoult, Rachel Weisz, and Sharon Small

Every now and then, Hugh Grant plays a role that is different from his usual role: the loveable, affable, and charming British man child thrown slightly off-balance by the aggressive woman. In About a Boy, Grant takes his boy child and turns him on his ear, not necessarily for the better.

Grant plays Will, a self-absorbed bachelor – a rich, single, child-free Londoner in his 30’s who suddenly discovers that all his friends have taken on the adult responsibilities of family life. First, he invents a toddler son in order to pass himself off as a single father so that he can date jilted mothers he meets in single parents club. He’s confident that he can leave the mums behind when he’s tired of them, but his machinations bring him into contact with Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), a 12-year old boy with massive problems at school and a suicidal mother (Toni Collette) at home. Though the boy is his opposite in many ways, Marcus becomes Will’s friend, of a sort. He teaches the boy how to be cool, and Marcus helps will grow up.

It’s hard to believe that Chris and Paul Weitz could go from being the masterminds behind American Pie to making a movie that is so at once painful, yet so heartwarming and life affirming as About a Boy. What the Weitz brothers show again is the ability to let the actors take the story, whatever it is, and perform. That was the key to American Pie – how well the actors worked through the hoops and gimmicks given them by the filmmakers. In this case, the Weitzs and co-writer Peter Hedges (who adapted their script from a novel by Nick Hornsby) give the characters plenty to chew, but the characters here aren’t nearly as endearing as they were in Pie.

Many movie critics and fans felt that the Academy had robbed Hugh Grant of an Oscar nomination for his performance in Boy. The truth of the matter is that the character is so shallow and empty that any actor with at least film acting experience, if not talent, could have played the role. Playing Will as he was written is not an artistic or professional achievement (save for the paycheck); it would not be too farfetched to say that Will is pretty much just a character name in a script. I know that the central conceit is that Will is supposed to be a shallow and empty character, but Will isn’t a character. He’s just an empty cipher or caricature. We get the idea that Will is shallow when we see how easily he casts off his lady friends. I guess we’re supposed to assume that Will sitting around his apartment all day is another sign of his shallowness and emptiness. I just took it as a sign that the script writers didn’t know how to make any of those scenes visually interesting. Will fills the film with tiresome narrations about his selfishness and self-centeredness, when, after his first two “character enriching” speeches, we got the point. For a brief moment in the film, Will thinks he sees his long dead father. Sadly the movie doesn’t focus on Will’s relationship with his own father, although the movie story spends so much time telling us that Will could be “a father/father figure.” Certainly, it’s no stretch of the imagination to suspect that Will’s personality comes from something to do with his father. Heck, Will lives off his father’s song royalties. That’s why he doesn’t work, so obviously that’s something to explore.

Nicholas Hoult’s Marcus is much more interesting, perhaps because the story is really about him and how he makes two grown ups grow up. I won’t call his a great child performance, but it’s quite good. Marcus is world weary and cynical. Even at his young age (12 years), he’s already accepted that pretty much everything is beyond his control. He takes his lumps as if his torment was not only preordained, but also divinely ordained. Young Mr. Hoult makes us invest ourselves in Marcus’s destiny, and that’s more than I can say about the rest of the cast. We want him to win, to succeed, because he’s done nothing to be in the position he’s been in, and he has so much wisdom that he sees the practical solutions that other characters need to make their lives a little better.

Despite my reservations, I liked About a Boy. If you can tolerate Will’s narration and instead focus on Marcus’s, you’ll find a hero in the character. I understand that the filmmakers had to give the spotlight to Grant’s (the movie star) Will, when the film’s most interesting notions come from Marcus: people need other people and sometimes they need lots of other people to catch them when they fall. Take the film’s plague of self-examining voiceovers with a grain of salt and instead focus on people connecting. You’ll like this movie enough to feel a little warm and fuzzy at the end.

6 of 10
B

NOTES:
2003 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay” (Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz)


2003 BAFTA Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role” (Toni Collette) and “Best Screenplay – Adapted”


2003 Golden Globe Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” and “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Hugh Grant)

"The Hurt Locker" Puts a Hurt on BAFTAs

“The Hurt Locker” sweep British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards

The ensemble drama about a bomb-disposal unit in Iraq, The Hurt Locker, dominated the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards. It won six of the eight categories for which it was nominated including the top prizes: best picture, director and original screenplay. It beat out the favorite, Avatar, in nearly all categories in which both movies went head to head. Avatar, which recently won the top prizes at the Golden Globes, only won two BAFTA awards, for visual effects and production design.

Fish Tank won the award for best British film.

The Hurt Locker’s director, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win for the BAFTA Award for best director. Ms. Bigelow dedicated her award to "never abandoning the need to find a resolution for peace

Not all the major prizes went back to Hollywood. Colin Firth (A Single Man) beat out Jeff Bridges, the heavy Oscar favorite for Crazy Heart, as best actor. Carey Mulligan won best actress for her role as a young ingénue in the British film, An Education.

Two actors who were expected to win and who are Oscar favorites did indeed win. Mo'Nique won supporting actress for Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, and Christoph Waltz for supporting actor in Inglourious Basterds.

Kristen Stewart of Twilight and New Moon won the “Orange Rising Star Award,” the only category to be decided by public vote.

Go to The Envelope for a full report.  Go here for a full list of winners.

Review: Oscar-Nominated "About Schmidt" a Dry Affair

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 37 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux


About Schmidt (2002)
Running time: 125 minutes (2 hours, 5 minutes)
MPAA – R for some language and brief nudity
DIRECTOR: Alexander Payne
WRITERS: Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne (from the novel by Louis Begley)
PRODUCERS: Michael Besman and Harry Gittes
CINEMATOGRAPHER: James Glennon
EDITOR: Kevin Tent
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA with elements of comedy

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Hope Davis, Dermot Mulroney, June Squibb, and Howard Hesseman

Before they won an Oscar for the meandering road film/midlife crisis tale, Sideways, the team of director/co-writer Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor fashioned the meandering road movie/geriatric life crisis, About Schmidt.

In the film, Warren R. Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) has just retired from his job as an insurance actuary. He is dealing with the fact that he thinks that his life has been a waste. Warren is also preoccupied by the things about his wife, Helen (June Squibb), that have always bothered him; in retirement, those things are really starting to work on his nerves. After Helen dies suddenly, Warren heads to Denver where his daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), is nearing her wedding to a waterbed salesman, Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), whom Warren doesn’t like. Warren hopes to dissuade Jeannie from marrying Randall, but Warren also has to deal with Randall’s eccentric family, including his mother, the lusty Roberta (Kathy Bates). But will this trip give meaning to Warren’s life?

In spite of its Oscar-nominated pedigree, About Schmidt is mostly an average film. Jack Nicholson gives a fine performance as Warren Schmidt, but you feel sorry for the character more than you root for him. That’s not necessarily bad, but considering that this film’s tone is more pathetic than poignant, it’s difficult to not find this entire scenario and the characters a little annoying. Kathy Bates gives a nice performance, trying to make her Roberta Hertzel more than just a one-note oddity. James Glennon’s photography certainly captures the essence of a soul adrift that is the core of the lead character.

However, no Payne/Taylor film is without its moments that help an average film be a little more interesting. The better elements in Sideways made it a good film, overcoming stretches of dryness; About Schmidt gets a bump, but not as much as Sideways. The film’s opening scene, in which Warren watches the clock tick away the last minutes of his career, is art itself, and the closing of the film brings some heart and heat to this cold and dry affair.

5 of 10
B-

NOTES:
2003 Academy Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Jack Nicholson) and “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Kathy Bates)


2003 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: best actor (Nicholson)


2003 Golden Globes: 2 wins: best motion picture actor-drama (Nicholson) and best screenplay-motion picture; 3 nominations: best picture-drama, best director-motion picture, and best supporting actress-motion picture (Bates)

Sunday, February 19, 2006