Woody, X-Men, Watergate

Last updated on: June 1, 2005 at 10:18 am by Peter T. Chattaway

Woody, X-Men, Watergate 2005-06-01T10:18:00-07:00 Peter T. Chattaway

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Just a couple more news bits.

1. The Hollywood Reporter says Woody Allen’s Match Point has a distributor now, and it’s DreamWorks, the studio that scored Allen’s biggest box-office success in years with Small Time Crooks (2000) — his top-grossing directorial effort since Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) — and then let him go after his follow-ups The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Hollywood Ending (2002), and especially Anything Else (2003) turned out to be among his biggest flops since Shadows and Fog (1992).

They say Match Point is Woody’s best film in years, and I sincerely hope that’s true, as I used to be a big fan of his, but I haven’t found any of his films all that memorable since 1994’s Bullets over Broadway (unless we count 1998’s Antz, the DreamWorks cartoon which starred his voice). I am certainly intrigued to hear that the film takes place in London — not in New York! — and that it stars Scarlett Johansson, whose art-house cred was beginning to waver, following her roles The Perfect Score, which was utterly disposable, and In Good Company, which was okay but didn’t give her much to do besides being The Girlfriend or The Daughter, depending on which male character’s perspective you see her from. But I finally got around to seeing Melinda and Melinda (which is being distributed by Fox Searchlight) the other day, and it sure seems to me like Woody is still treading water.

2. The Hollywood Reporter also says Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn has ankled X-Men 3, which starts shooting here in Vancouver in just two months. The script is in place, the actors are in place, now all they need is someone to call the shots.

As a Canadian and a Christian, the X-Men franchise has always had a slightly extra appeal for me, even though I was a DC fan, not a Marvel fan, back in my comic-collecting days. The coolest character in the films — Wolverine — is a Canadian, and the first movie was filmed in Toronto, and the scene in the bar where we actually see real Canadian currency onscreen warmed my heart when I saw the film for the first time during my two-week trip to New Mexico and other points in the United States in the summer of 2000. That money shot (!) was a nice piece of home.

The second film was made in Vancouver, several months after Sir Ian McKellen was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring, and there were plenty of “sightings” — at the Fringe Festival, at the Film Festival, and so on. McKellen, who plays Magneto in the X-Men movies, didn’t have a whole lot to do in the second one, but he stayed in B.C. for quite some time, and even lent his talents to local independent filmmaker Carl Bessai, starring in his low-budget film Emile.

Add to all this the fact that one of the producers on these films is Ralph Winter, an open Christian who I interviewed over the phone while he was making the first film in 1999, and then met in person when he spoke at Regent College while he was making the second film in 2002 — plus the fact that the second film introduced the Christian superhero Nightcrawler — and it’s all been fun.

3. Charles Colson, former Nixon hatchet man turned evangelical broadcaster, is upset about the revelation that the infamous, mysterious “Deep Throat” was actually the No. 2 guy at the FBI.

Me, I’m just wondering how all those old Nixon movies will look, now that we know who this guy really was. It has been years since I saw All the President’s Men (1976), but I imagine that would be really interesting to watch right now. And I lament the fact that the resolution of this mystery probably means we will never again be treated to such inventive comedies as Dick (1999), which posited that “Deep Throat” was actually a couple of teenaged girls, played by Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams. (And what an odd film that was. I wonder how the filmmakers pitched it, or what sort of cross-demographic marketing plan the studio had. I love the bit where Dan Hedaya, as Nixon, says to his dog, “Quiet, Checkers! Or I’ll feed you to the Chinese!” But there are a couple of arcane political references wrapped up in that one bit of dialogue that must have flown right over the heads of the film’s intended teenaged audience.)

FWIW, Born Again, Colson’s account of how he converted to Christianity while the Watergate scandal brewed, was turned into a film in its own right in 1978, starring Dean Jones (The Love Bug, The Shaggy D.A.) as Colson; Jay Robinson (The Robe‘s Caligula) as his lawyer David Shapiro; 1940s leading man Dana Andrews (Boomerang!, Up in Arms, Laura) as Tom Phillips, the man who introduced Colson to the faith; and Peter Jurasik (Babylon 5‘s Londo Mollari!!) as Henry Kissinger. It appears to be available on video right now, but not yet on DVD.

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