Newsbites: De Carlo! Devil! Children! Writers!

Last updated on: January 10, 2007 at 2:43 pm by Peter T. Chattaway

Newsbites: De Carlo! Devil! Children! Writers! 2007-01-10T14:43:00-08:00 Peter T. Chattaway

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Here’s another batch to keep you all going.

1. Variety reports that Yvonne De Carlo, the Vancouver-born star of The Ten Commandments (1956; she played Moses’ wife) and The Munsters (1964-1966), has passed away at the age of 84. While she may be better known for roles like those, among my siblings she will always be remembered for her performance as Peter Ustinov’s flirtatious wife in the World War II comedy Hotel Sahara (1951).

2. Ever hear about The Devil and Daniel Webster, a remake of the 1941 movie directed by Alec Baldwin and starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Anthony Hopkins in the title roles? The film has been in the can since 2001, but various corporate and legal problems have kept it from being released — until now, reports Variety:

Bob Yari’s distribution arm, Yari Film Group Releasing, has bought the embattled film and is planning to distribute it to theaters in the spring.

Exec will build a campaign that he hopes will convey to auds what has gotten lost in the press about pic’s backstory: It’s a “lighthearted comedy” but nonetheless “a message movie about how there are few shortcuts in life.”

Yari will change the title from its devilish original to the more upbeat “Shortcut to Happiness.” . . .

Oh, yeah, that title will sure help the movie sell!

3. David Poland has read P.D. James’s Children of Men and finds it much more satisfying than Alfonso Cuarón’s film version:

There are a thousand little details from the film and from the book that can be used or not used, foreground or background. I don’t seek literalist filmmaking. But what I got from the book that I never got from the film is the power of people making choices about their lives. Whatever the circumstances of their lives, the film suggests a repeated sense of inescapable, inevitable forward motion and lack of personal responsibility in the choices of the characters . . .

And maybe that is the core of my disappointment with the storytelling in the film. What I find compelling in films is people making choices and either taking or actively avoiding responsibility. And what this film seems quite happy to do is to allow outside forces to have a great deal more power than any human being. I don’t mind a film about the forces that push us around our personal chess boards. But there is a way of approaching the story that makes that the story and that is not how I see this film. I see it claiming the personal and disconnecting from it enough to create safety for the viewer, who also gets the benefit of all those pretty pictures.

Perhaps that should be enough. It is not for me. All the more after having read the book – the blueprint – and imagining what could have been with the same great actors and the same great director.

Speaking of Children of Men, Variety recently posted an article comparing and contrasting Cuarón’s film with V for Vendetta; both films offer dystopian views of a future England, but they take very different narrative and aesthetic approaches in doing so.

4. The Los Angeles Times says Long Beach residents aren’t happy with the way their community is portrayed in Freedom Writers:

They aren’t happy with its portrayal of the true story of Long Beach teacher Erin Gruwell and her at-risk students, saying it offers an oversimplified, insulting narrative about the community: poor racial minorities triumph over lazy, jealous teachers and The Man.

The Freedom Writers — Gruwell’s 150 students who named themselves for the civil rights group — included Caucasian and middle-class students, the critics point out. One was the popular football quarterback. Wilson High’s students also came from affluent Eastside neighborhoods with waterfront mansions, and plenty of teachers at the high school helped Gruwell and her cause.

Gruwell and writer-director Richard LaGravenese stand by the film, which opened Friday to a modest $9.7 million. They spent six years crafting the screenplay, with Gruwell and her students guiding LaGravenese’s drafts. Much of it was taken directly from “The Freedom Writers Diaries,” a collection of excerpts from the students’ journals that offers an often wrenching account of their home lives.

Gruwell and LaGravenese stress that the movie takes place from 1993 to 1998, when Long Beach and Wilson High were much tougher than they are today. Gruwell says her classes were as they appear in the film: predominantly made up of African Americans, Latinos and Asians. The white, middle-class students, Gruwell says, only joined after word spread of her teaching methods. . . .

For what it’s worth, in my own review of the film, I noted that most of the characters were handled quite well, except for the “two-dimensional, easy-to-despise villains” on the school’s staff. So I think there is probably merit to some of these complaints.

5. One of the first things I learned about my wife is that she’s a big fan of the Mummy movies (1999-2002; my review), so I must note the fact that, according to Variety, the studio is now talking to Rob Cohen — director of The Fast and the Furious (2001), xXx (2002) and Stealth (2005) — about directing The Mummy 3. Hmmm.

6. Are you waiting for a truce in the “format wars” between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD before diving in? The Associated Press reports:

LAS VEGAS — LG Electronics will begin selling a dual-format high definition player designed to call a truce in the continuing war between rival DVD formats.

The model BH100, dubbed “Super Multi Blue,” will play discs in the Blu-ray format, backed by a group led by Sony Corp. LG is a member of the Blu-ray consortium.

It will also play discs in the rival HD DVD format, which is backed by a consortium headed by Toshiba Corp.

But while it will display the full range of interactive features contained on Blu-ray discs, such as menus that appear while the film is playing, it will not play similar interactive elements contained on HD DVD discs. . . .

Meanwhile, ComingSoon.net reports:

Warner Home Video (WHV) today unveiled its groundbreaking “Total Hi Def” disc, which plays the HD DVD format on one side and the Blu-ray Disc format on the other, at a presentation hosted by Warner Bros. Entertainment Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. . . .

If broadly adopted by the industry, the Total Hi Def disc would eliminate consumer confusion by including both formats on a single disc. Tested with leading manufacturers and replicators, the Total Hi Def disc would also simplify point of sale issues for retailers by reducing the shelf space required to carry two versions of the same content. . . .

Warner Bros. announced that discs in Total Hi Def will be available in the second half of 2007, and titles will be announced in a time frame consistent with the company’s standard trade announcements for home entertainment titles. The physical structure of the disc is 1.2 mm the same as DVDs, HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. The Total Hi Def disc has the ability to contain both single layer and dual layers for both formats enabling either 15 GB or 30 GB on the HD DVD side and 25 GB or 50 GB on the Blu-ray side.

Whatever, guys. Just please bring this madness to an end!

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