Cinemania '09 Roundup: 'Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky,' 'Welcome,' 'Please Please Me!' & 'La Tres Tres Grand Enterprise'

This weekend marks the beginning of the 15th anniversary edition of Cinemania, the Montreal film festival dedicated to showing French films, all with English subtitles. Over the past decade and a half, Cinemania has been a unique player in the festival circuit, focusing largely on the films of the diverse French film industry and giving them a home at this event. For many of the films, they will not receive regular North American theatrical distribution or even make it to DVD on this side of the ocean, making their appearances at the festival that much more unique. We will be at the festival over the next ten days, taking in as much as we can and letting you know what's worth tracking down and what you shouldn't feel bad about missing.

It should also be noted, that all the films are being presented in 35mm which we want to take a moment to applaud. At the Festival Du Nouveau Cinema last month, a good handful of the films we saw were "digital projections" on systems that clearly needed an upgrade. We're not going to get into the "film versus digital" debate, but subpar digital projections does both the filmmaker and audience a disservice, and we're glad that Cinemania have made how the films are presented, a top priority.

"Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" - The other film about Coco Chanel has one of the best opening sequences we've seen all year. It's 1913, and patrons of a Paris ballet are about to be treated to the first performance of Igor Stravinsky's (Mads Mikkelsen) "The Rites Of Spring." Director Jan Kounen, instead of cutting directly to the historic catcalls and near riots that greeted Stravinsky's work, makes the smart choice of allowing the full piece, with the original choreography play out, allowing viewers to really experience how shocking this event was. It marked the beginning of a downward spiral for the famous composer, but the rising Coco was in the audience, and little did they know their lives would intersect again. Seven years later, the madly successful Coco (Anna Mouglalis) decides to put up the down-and-out composer and his family in her country villa, presumably so he can have a quiet place to work, but of course she has other intentions. Kounen's intelligent handling of the opening sets a tone for the rest of the film. The material could so easily be played for high melodrama in lesser hands, but Kounen's film, buoyed by solid lead performances, is sumptuous, yet subtle, passionate and measured. Kounen navigates the mad affair between Chanel and Stravinsky, and it's consequences, with a deft hand. His finest touch is in the unfolding the complexity of these characters, celebrating their artistic brilliance, while not being afraid to show the selfishness and callousness that also drives their romance. Even a subplot, about the creation of the famous "Chanel No. 5", is managed wonderfully into the rest of the film and by the time the film graciously comes to a close, though their relationship has fizzled, Kounen still finds a way to express the resonating heartbeats that lasted for the rest of their lives. "Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" is wonderful portrait of two artists who found inspiration in the forbidden. [A-]

"Welcome" - The latest from director Philippe Loiret is a bracing drama that takes a humanist look at the refugee crisis in northern France. Bilal (Firat Ayverdil) has spent three months on foot, crossing Europe, hoping to reach his girlfriend who is already in England. His only barrier is the imposing English Channel and his options are few. He can pay 500 Euros and have a human smuggler attempt to get him into the UK, or he can swim, but both choices are fraught with potentially fatal consequences. After the former option fails, Bilal works his way into a public swimming pool and begins to take lessons from Simon (Vincent London in a wonderfully nuanced performance), a former swim pro. As their lessons continue, Simon slowly becomes pulled into Bilal's life, and upon learning the extent of his young friend's plight, puts his career and life on the line to help him. Loiret's film avoids any grandstanding, but makes a determined point about the treatment of refugees and in the process becomes a rewarding, moving look at an endlessly complex issue. [B+]

"Please Please Me!" - This breezy comedy, written, directed and starring French comedic actor Emmanuel Mouret, is set in motion by a plot point that plays like a Bizarro World version of "Breaking The Waves." The sexually frustrated Jean-Jacques (Mouret) is encouraged by his cock-blocking girlfriend Ariane (Frederique Bel) to sleep with another woman to satisfy his needs, and in turn she believes it will make them a more progressive couple. Jean-Jacques reluctantly agrees and calls up Elisabeth (Judith Godreche), a woman he flirted with in a bar who happened to show an interest in him as well. It turns out that she's the French Prime Minister's daughter, and when he shows up to meet her, he finds himself thrust into an upper crust party where he fits in like a square peg in a round hole. The entire second act of the film is a riff on Peter Sellers' "The Party," where the everyman Jean-Jacques gets into a series of increasingly ridiculous mishaps, while the maid Aneth (played by the heart-stoppingly beautiful Deborah Francois) continually bails him out. This is the most enjoyable part of the film as Mouret has an incredible Buster Keaton-esque face, remarkable physicality and sets up some delightful physical and visual gags that would've made Jacques Tati proud. However, once Jean-Jacques leaves the party, we're dragged back into the dull story about his relationship with Ariane. "Please Please Me!" never builds to the hilarious boiling point of films by the aforementioned masters, but it's a solid effort that's a little more admirable because they don't make them like this very often anymore. [C+]

"La Tres Tres Grand Enterprise" - When a big agricultural company settles with the inhabitants of a village for polluting their air and water, shutting down their businesses and economy, four residents decide that the settlement money isn't enough and decide to infiltrate the head offices to dig up more dirt, and in turn get some more money. Billed as an "Ocean's Four" styled caper, director Pierre Jolivet's film is strangely inert, laboriously taking us through each step of the group's plan to get a job at the company, find out where the sensitive info is and....well, you get the picture. While Steven Soderbergh's films did have some elaborate set-ups, it never felt like you were actually on the job, doing the grunt work the way Jolivet's film does. And when Jolivet isn't struggling to breathe some life into the shenanigans these four get themselves into, he unwisely detours jarringly into some fairly dramatic backstories involving drug addict lovers and divorces. "Le Tres Tres Grand Enterprise," never quite manages to be the flashy, David-and-Goliath story it wants to be, but instead plays out like a watered down version of "Mark Whitacre meets Danny Ocean." [C-]

Nicole Kidman & Gwyneth Paltrow To Get Married In 'The Danish Girl'

OK, now this is totally hot, errr... ok, actually it isn't. Remember "The Danish Girl"?

It's a gender-bender that chronicles the story of a relationship between the first post-operative transsexual with Tomas Alfredson ("Let the Right One In") directing. Wait, before the nerds get too excited about the filmmaker's first post-vampire film, they better read the fine print quickly and don't be surprised if half of them are running for the door before the sentence is over.

Charlize Theron was to star as the the wife to the world's first male-to-female sex change patient (played by Nicole Kidman), but she dropped out of the drama earlier this fall.

Well, Kidman has her new mate now in Gwyneth Paltrow according to Deal Memo. The sex-changed drama is an adaptation of the David Ebershoff novel, and is based off a script written by Lucinda Coxon ("The Heart of Me," and also a playwright).

Here's some of the Amazon synopsis:

Though the title character of David Ebershoff's debut novel is a transsexual, the book is less concerned with transgender issues than the mysterious and ineffable nature of love. Loosely based on the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener (Kidman's role) who, in 1931, became the first man to undergo a sex-change operation, The Danish Girl borrows the bare bones of his story as a jumping-off point for an exploration of how Wegener's decisions affected the people around him. Chief among these is his Californian wife, Greta (Paltrow's role), also a painter, who unwittingly sets her husband's feet on the path to transformation. While trying to finish a portrait of an opera singer who has cancelled a sitting, she asks Einar to stand in for her subject, putting on her dress, stockings, and shoes. The moment silk touches his skin, he is shaken. Greta soon recognizes her husband's affinity for feminine attire, and encourages him not only to dress like a woman, but to take on a woman's persona, as well. "Why don't we call you Lili?" she suggests. What starts out as a harmless game soon evolves into something deeper, and potentially threatening to their marriage. Yet Greta's love proves to be enduring if not immutable. As Einar inexorably transforms, he steps beyond "that small dark space between two people where a marriage exists" and Greta lets him go.

Felicity Huffman was busy. We'll admit the idea of Nicole Kidman as a man isn't appetizing to any one on staff, men or women and "Transamerica," didn't exactly light up our Netflix queue, but it still sounds like a pretty interesting experiment that you don't see everyday, especially with this level of A-list stars. "Boys Don't Cry" set in 1930s Denmark, maybe?

New 'Wolfman' Poster, Now With 99% Less Werewolf

OK, so we made this "Wolfman" poster 444 pixels high so now that means we have to write enough chum fille insightful analysis to fill this post.

The new "Wolfman," poster has debuted via Cinematical this evening, and it's about 99% less lupine-like then we're used to.

In fact, since there are so many female writers over at Cinematical, perhaps this black-and-white poster featuring a frightened, but resilient Emily Blunt was tailor-made for them in an attempt to appeal to their Girl Power?

Where's the Werewolf? Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins or Hugo Weaving?

They must be hiding. The Joe Johnston-directed film has been plagued with delays, but the most recent trailer was less embarrassing then usual, so maybe we'll have some light popcorn entertainment when this thing hits on February 12.

Two days before Valentine's day and Emily Blunt is in it? We smell a unrequited love story. Hey, maybe it's "Twilight" with Werewolves? Oh nevermind...

'Crazy Heart' Hits Theaters December 16

Congratulations to the Ocsar bloggers so bored with this predictable awards season that they've basically forced Fox Searchlight's hand.

To recap, "Amelia" sucked, so Searchlight had no Oscar contender, but then thought, "wait, we have..." the country music drama, "Crazy Heart," starring Colin Farrell, Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall in the queue.

The film was supposed to hit for Spring 2010, but with zero Oscar hopefuls, Searchlight screened it for a few select critics this week to gauge their interest. They approved! Voila. Now "Crazy Heart" is being rushed into screens on December 16. We're all for it. It sounds great and T. Bone Burnett ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?") wrote the original music.

Now all we need to do is see it and figure out if it's as good as they say or if it's just desperate Oscar writers thankful for something new and halfway decent to write about. It's probably a 50/50 call (i.e. look at overrated things like the Lifetime Movie "Trucker" being drooled over because... why does a dog lick its balls again?)

Sacha Baron Cohen Set To Produce Two Upcoming Projects

Sacha Baron Cohen continues to prosper in the post-Ali G era. He has already made an obscene amount of cash for this movies "Borat" and "Bruno" and according to Variety, has two more projects in development via his production company "Four By Two Films."

The first is an untitled project that was just picked up by Columbia Pictures for a reported seven-figures. Columbia beat out two other studios in the bidding process for a script that isn't even written yet. Though it will be penned by the same team that penned "Borat" and "Bruno" (Baron Cohen, Peter Baynham, Ant Hines, and Dan Mazer) so we suppose the confidence isn't misplaced. "Borat" was great and even for all its faults "Bruno" pulled in nearly $140 worldwide (that's not really the bomb we all thought it was this summer now was it?).

Second up (though probably the first to be made of the two) is the ambulance-chasing lawyer comedy, "Accidentes" and was purchased by Universal Pictures after Fox Atomic, who previously owned the rights, folded and it went up for grabs last summer. Baron Cohen will play a Latino-American attorney in LA who wins a case against a wealthy member of the community and in doing so becomes a hero to the blue collar workers of the city. Baron Cohen is set to produce both projects but this is the only one he will definitely star in as well.

Thank god we will be seeing him do normal movies for at least the near future. The formula he used for "Bruno" and "Borat" was on its last legs as it is and there are only so many wigs he can wear before people recognize him.

Spanish 'Triage' Poster, Trailer, Clip, Photos & More Of Colin Farrell War Journo Film

Director Danis Tanovic earned an Oscar and raves for his darkly comic look at war, "No Man's Land," but there appears to be little humor in his English-language feature debut, "Triage" — and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Colin Farrell stars as Mark Walsh, a war journalist who captures shocking photos of atrocities in Kurdistan, but who seems most bothered by the disappearance of his friend (Jamie Sives). The trailer and clips from the film make "Triage" look incredibly intense, but Farrell should be able to carry its weight on his shoulders.

After audiences overdosed on the Irish actor in the early aughts, Farrell made a comeback in recent years with the excellent "In Bruges" and some cleaner living. Recently, he's worked with such talented directors as genre-jumping Neil Jordan in "Ondine" and the oft-overreaching Terry Gilliam in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Tanovic is no slouch himself, beating out "Amelie" for his 2002 Academy Award and making a strong showing with "L'enfer" and his segment in "September 11."

The gorgeous Paz Vega gets second billing, and we've got our fingers crossed that she'll return to some of her "Sex and Lucia" glory that was tarnished by "Spanglish," "10 Items or Less," and "The Spirit." We're also glad to see the sadly underused Kelly Reilly ("Mrs. Henderson Presents") and solid character actress Juliet Stevenson ("And When Did You Last See Your Father?") in the trailer. The iconic Christopher Lee gets some much deserved non-genre work here as well, not that we don't love seeing him interact with Orcs and droids.

At the moment, "Triage" doesn't have a U.S. distributor or release date (which explains the Spanish-language poster, to your left), but that may change with its upcoming appearance at the American Film Market. Here's a few more new images as well.

Don't Mention 'The Twilight Zone' To Richard Kelly Regarding 'The Box'

Please don't see this as a pile on, it's just what's next, but yes, we saw Richard Kelly's "The Box," last night at Lincoln Center and the director was in attendance for a Q&A afterwards (read our review, we didn't love it).

The tendency, in some circles, arguably ours, is to hate on Kelly, call him a jocky douchebag and dismiss him outright, but last night he presented himself as a rather inquisitive and thoughtful guy, which was nice to see.

He may not have made a great picture, but we are rooting for him to one day do so.

Regardless, one of the stranger things that came up last night was the reaction to any mention of "The Twilight Zone." It's fairly well-known that Kelly's suspense thriller was based on the 1970 short story "Button, Button" ("6-10 pages" by Kelly's count) by horror-sci-fi writer Richard Matheson and later adapted into an episode of the 1980s incarnation of the "The Twilight Zone" TV show.

But something was up and Kelly didn't even ever mention the show by name. "I'm not supposed to talk about a certain TV show for legal reasons," Kelly told the NYC crowd looking slightly annoyed and as if he wanted to change the subject.

During the Q&A if the show topic was ever broached it was quickly called, "that show," and then the conversation moved on.

Later on, an audience member asked about "The Twilight Zone" version of the story that they had never seen and the differences between the two and Kelly opted out of answering the question responding with a half-joking, half-serious, "I'm worried if I answer that question I'll be answering calls by lawyers in the morning."

James Marsden was in attendance as well and when he accidentally said, "The Twilight Zone," in one of his responses, quickly caught himself and said "that show," Kelly winced with an almost, "dude, I told you not to mention that," look.

Interestingly enough, Movieline ran a pretty large, three-page interview with Kelly and "that show," never comes up once, not even from the writer in passing. Someone's obviously threatened to sue. The makers of the show we presume, since Matheson was talked about liberally throughout the evening? Did Kelly borrow too freely from that adaptation? Here's "The Twilight Zone" version of "Button Button" below. It's rather long so if we have anything salient to say we'll respond after the clip momentarily. Interestingly enough, the episode is directed by Peter Medak of 90s fame for decent indies like, "The Krays" and "Romeo Is Bleeding" (the 1993 film with Gary Oldman and Lena Olin; not to be confused with the lame, "Romeo Must Die").

'The Box' Review: Another Pseudo-Deep, Confused & Silly Richard Kelly Picture Though Not A Disaster Either

If Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko," was an auspicious little start — though grossly overrated in nerd circles, as are most half-decent sci-fi or genre films — and "Southland Tales," is a hilarious trainwreck, then his third feature-length film, the suspense thriller, "The Box," is an obtuse, silly misfire, but at least not the spectacular disaster of his previous effort.

Though it is laughable that he believes this film is a commercial effort, kudos regardless to Warner Bros. for taking a risk on this largely inaccessible film — though clearly many think quite the opposite — in a year of risky propositions ("Watchmen," "Where The Wild Things Are"). Though maybe they should have put their money on a better gamble.

Set in 1976 suburban Virginia — surprisingly there is a purpose for setting the film in this time period, no one would buy this hokey story if it took place in modern day — the story chronicles husband and wife duo Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, basically modeled after Kelly's parents), their everyday lives and their economic woes ; don't worry it's not particularly culturally relevant or prescient, its just a semi-contrived fateful plot device to help the narrative move forward.

Diaz's cougar mom's teaching job is about to end because of budget cuts and Marsden's dreams to be an astronaut (and gain a major pay raise) are about to be crushed (though his managerial NASA gig is still in place). They're financially "stretched to the limits" as she says, foreshadowing the conundrum that's about to present itself.

And then, just as this misfortune has hit the couple, the goofy premise does just that: present itself as a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) that comes out of nowhere and drops off a box at their doorstep at 5am. It's a box with a button, but it's locked with a key.

The next day as Marsden is at work — he's part of NASA’s Mars initiative to land a robotic research unit on the planet — the disfigured stranger — who's missing half the side of his face ala Harvey Dent — offers up his ominous proposition: push the button, you get $1 million dollars. But oh yeah, there's a fineprint rub, and someone you don't know... will die.

Yes, it's kind of ridiculous. After back and forth debate with her incredulous and skeptical scientist husband — the rational scientist tries to take apart the box revealing nothing — the couple fails the moral test put in front of them and the button is pushed, though more out of, "fuck it," then greed or malice. But it's tooooo late.

Suddenly a local murder takes place where a man shoots his wife in the chest. Langella's stranger drops off the money and a chain of irrevocable events are kicked off when Marsden makes cardinal mistake numero uno and contacts his father-in-law police detective to investigate what the hell is going on (Rule number 1 about The Box: you do not talk about the Box). But he's also not telling the story, and playing detective boy on his own trying to unravel the pieces of what's about to become a muddled story.

From there things get strange and as per usual Kelly's modus operandi, convoluted, confused and pseudo-deep. The work of Jean Paul Sarte is referenced in Diaz's classroom, for example, and again, near the end of the picture, but the reading of his work and placement within seems forced and facile.

A confounding (and not entirely interesting) mystery unfolds regarding the strange button man, his motivations and intentions, but either Kelly won't fully say what's going on, or he can't fully articulate it himself, because the second half is a largely eye-rolling mess of ideas crammed together once more in hopes of somehow trying to pass off the bemusing abstraction as profundity.

There's a conspiracy at work (much of it is rather familiar and delivered as though going through the motions): a super powered man from NASA who was struck by lightning that died, then resurrected; zombie-like "employees" who bleed from their nose; a wormhole (with exact "Donnie Darko"-like leftover effects), and a looping tragedy that is doomed to repeat itself. Why? After a certain point of guffawing and head-shaking with mild disappointment, you sort of give up bothering to figure out what this thick-headed story is actually trying to say or accomplish.

One could call Kelly pretentious, but that would suggest the filmmaker possesses an artistry that he does not. To call the film inscrutable is to suggest there's something complex here at work (even using the word "abstraction" is far too generous a term). Even worse, there's always a very stilted tonally-off air to Kelly's work that often begats unintentional laughter, and "The Box," is similar in that respect. It's as if he's making sci-fi films with lifeless porn actors that don't know how to deliver lines.

There's also wtf?? gaping plot holes we're supposed to forgive? Cameron Diaz's character is kidnapped, but after Marsden spends five minutes in the watery CGI wormhole, she's inexplicably safely at home. Perhaps logic is not of the most importance here.

Climaxing in an emotional scene between the couple in a do-or-die situation, Kelly has said the sequence was saved for last production sched-wise and was brutal for the actors to perform, but sadly the scene, full of meant-to-be gut-wrenching tears and declarations of love is curiously emotionally unaffecting and flat — the actors and director not possessing the abilities to make the sequence resound on any level, yet everyone clearly doing their best and believing they are stretching their talents (no one's terrible here per se, it's just that no one is particularly remarkable either).

"The Box" does unravel more than usual in its nonsensical last act and its anticlimactic, that's-it? moral lesson conclusion, but it must be said that up until the midway point — perfectly captured in this scene, funnily enough -- the picture is largely competent, makes structural sense and is at least mildly compelling (though yes, is still a bit preposterous and frivolous).

Kelly's out-there, jumbled ideas and his inability to make things clear or simple is what makes the director his own worst enemy. This is a creative guy bursting with so much to say, but he's essentially spent his entire career trying to run, before having learned how to walk. He's clearly talented and is so young he hopefully has years to learn, but the man can't afford too many more bombs and "The Box" is nowhere near the accessible commercial hit he thinks it is (sorry, but we're betting this thing tanks).

A "Twilight Zone"-like short story stretched way past the point of its goofy, dated and unbelievable premise, and an antiquated nod to Hitchcock (via the Kelly odd filter), "The Box" might have worked 30 years ago, but as it stands today, it's mostly a curiously confused movie that's only marginally thrilling, suspenseful and engaging.

The Arcade Fire score that many are wondering about is... ok, but rather conventional and a few times unintentionally funny with it's oooh, scary cliches. Also, we felt rather embarrassed for them when we imagined them inventing the score to this picture. If the thought, "What did we get ourselves into?" didn't cross their minds at least once — even if they didn't share the idea aloud with one another — there's probably something deeply wrong with them on a human level.

There's bizarre enigma in cinema that can create inspired awe with ambiguity and then there's bizarre that's pretty banal and believes it's much more profound and thoughtful than it actually is. Guess where "The Box" fits? Though still, compared to "Southland Tales," it's at least a small step in the right direction towards clarity. [C]

Stephen Frears Returns To The Underworld For 'Lay the Favorite'

Stephen Frears has had one of the most varied, interesting career of any working filmmaker. There have been misfires along the way ("Mary Reilly," most notably, and this year's "Cheri" wasn't great), but from "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Dangerous Liaisons" to "Dirty Pretty Things" and "The Queen," he's produced diverse, consistently strong work.

He's currently filming the graphic novel adaptation "Tamara Drewe," (calm down fanboys, it's actually a retelling of Thomas Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd", without a cape in sight), but he's already lined up his next project. He'll reteam with "High Fidelity" co-writer D.V. De Vincentis on "Lay the Favorite," an adaptation of Beth Raymer's memoir "Lay the Favorite, Take the Dog." The story will follow a woman in her thirties who becomes involved with a group of fiftysomething math geeks in Queens who have worked out a way to rig the sportsbooks in Vegas.

It sounds a bit close to the flashy, shallow Kevin Spacey vehicle "21," but it sounds far more interesting — De Vincentis told the Hollywood Reporter the gamblers "have an intense pride in a very specific expertise — and a lack of socialization." Indeed, it's being described as a mix of "High Fidelity" and "The Grifters," which makes us absurdly happy — "The Grifters" is one of this writer's favorite movies, and probably Frears' best. The picture's set up at Focus Features, and will hopefully get rolling next year.

Isla Fisher A 'Desperado'; Bradley Cooper Gets Smart; Eminem Set To Scare & 'Liberace' Inches Closer

-Isla Fisher is circling "Desperados," a spec script by Ellen Rapoport that was recently picked up by Universal, which the studio is describing as a "female-oriented 'The Hangover.'" The story is about a woman who sends an indignant email to her beau after she dosen't hear from him, only to find out he's in a coma in Mexico. She then races there to intercept the e-mail before he wakes up. "The Hangover" plot was equally absurd but was saved by a great cast, and if this film is to succeed, it will need some great leads to support Fisher.

-Bradley Cooper is set to replace Shia LaBeouf in "Dark Fields," a new thriller by Neil Burger. Described as a cross between "Fight Club" and "The Game," the film is about a writer who gains professional and financial success after taking a top-secret, intelligence enhancing drug. Unfortunately, the drug has some lethal side effects including "trip-switching," in which time moves with a stop-motion quality. Frankly this sounds a little bit intelligence draining, and we were up with the premise until it got to the time-trip nonsense. We'll give it a go if Burger manages to succeed where countless others have failed. Time alterting films are almost never good.

-You're about to get more Eminem than you ever bargained for. The rapper has signed on to his first film since "8 Mile," the 3D horror anthology "Shady Talez." The film is being described as a mix between "Creepshow" and "The Twilight Zone," and will also be turned into a 4-issue comic in 2010 under the Marvel Icons imprint. "Underworld" story creator Kevin Grevioux is writing the screenplay along with "I, Robot" producer John Davis. Davis, Eminem and Dallas Jackson are producing, but we urge them to read our anthology assessment before moving ahead. We like Em as an actor so far, but a 3D horror anthology sounds kinda dumb.

-Some small in-roads are being made to get "Liberace" some financing. KMI has signed on to pitch international sales for Steven Soderbergh's movie — starring Michael Douglas as the flamboyant entertainer — and the filmmaker is at AFM this week trying to find funds (then again, who isn't there this week trying to entice someone to invest in their new project this week?). Much like we've already reported, producer Jerry Weintraub expects filming to begin in June 2010, once Soderbergh wraps up the tentatively titled "Knock Out" which is set to begin shooting in January. The script is partly based on "Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace," by Scott Thorson, Liberace's lover for five years (Matt Damon's got that role), who caused a public stir when he tried to out the showbiz star when he filed a palimony suit. Let's hope it happens.

If all this pans out, it confirms Damon as the busiest man in Hollywood. He is currently working on Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter," after which he'll more than likely be doing the press rounds for "Green Zone" that comes in out in March, which also happens to be the month he begins work on the Coen Brothers' adaptation of "True Grit," after which he will start pre-production on "Liberace." Phew. We can't remember the last actor who had such a diverse trifecta of films on their plate and we applaud Damon for putting his name to these projects, helping them to get greenlit. Keep 'em coming, Matt.

In Theaters: 'A Christmas Carol,' 'The Box,' 'The Men Who Stare At Goats,' 'Precious'

After last week's Michael Jackson extravaganza "This Is It" stormed the box office and scared the pants off of Halloween moviegoers with real undead action; the holiday season kicks off in earnest this weekend. Four films hit wide this weekend hoping to make a dent in wallets before shopping season with "Disney's A Christmas Carol" the only one likely to produce serious receipts at the box office.

In Wide Release: Robert Zemeckis returns to the creepy motion-capture animation of his "Polar Express" film with "Disney's A Christmas Carol." Jim Carrey stars as Scrooge and various other ghosts in the film in what is sure to be a virtuosic performance, hopefully Zemeckis is able to breathe life into the images on screen, as these films usually feel more artificial that straight-up animation. You can catch the flick in 3D and Imax, to double the sensory overload, but what we're really hoping for is the Dickens' story, told well, with a believable and touching Jim Carrey performance. Time will tell whether this will be an enduring holiday classic but with a supporting cast that includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins, we're hoping for the best. Rotten Tomatoes has a fresh rating of 61% with Metacritic chiming in with a score of 62. Honestly? One of our people saw it, but since Disney was more than happy to send 5,000 promotion links, trailer, posters, images, etc. but refused to respond to screening reviews until it was too late, we decided to simply not run one. Yup, take that.

Director Grant Heslov packs a huge punch of starpower in his new film "The Men Who Stare at Goats." George Clooney, Ewan MacGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey crowd the marquee in this military farce based on the book by Jon Ronson. MacGregor plays a reporter who delves into the world of secret psychic regimes in the Iraq War. Based on the cast and a funny trailer we've been anticipating this one for the better part of the year. We first got a chance to see the film at Toronto and found plenty to like, but our most recent take left us cold, with an unfocused and unfunny film. The cast alone will probably get some folks in the seats, but don't go expecting "Three Kings"-style quality here. The film has a fresh rating of 58% at RT and a 57 score from Metacritic.

Richard Kelly's third feature "The Box" finally hits screens this weekend after having its release date constantly shifted and pushed back for a year. After the major fiasco that was "Southland Tales," the "Donnie Darko" auteur needs a hit, but we'd settle for a decent film. Cameron Diaz and James Mardsen star as an ordinary couple in 70's middle America who are given a box with a single red button in it. Push the button and they receive one million dollars, but at the expense of the life on someone they don't know. Of more interest that the premise for most Playlisters, members of the Arcade Fire contribute to the soundtrack, which should be released in the future. We're hoping for a tight little thriller to make us believe in Kelly again, but this may be his last chance to have studio success and his chances don't look great so far. "The Box" has a not-so-great 43% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and 45 score from Metacritic. We haven't run our review yet, but give it an hour. Essentially it's a convoluted mess, as per usual, but not as outrageously bad as "Southland Tales," which we guess is something...

Finally, in wide release, comes "The Fourth Kind" from director Olatunde Osunsami. Milla Jovovich stars in the modestly budgeted pseudo-documentary fright flick about a small Alaskan town whose residents are disappearing at an alarming rate. Don't expect this one to put a stop to the ongoing massive success of "Paranormal Activity," it will probably hit DVD before that one is done theatrically. The weird cast also includes Elias Koteas and Will Patton. Currently the film is 26% fresh at RT with a 37 score from Metacritic.

In Limited Release: We've been hearing about "Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire" pretty much nonstop since Sundance. The Oprah-endorsed film stars newcomer Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe as Precious, an overweight sixteen year old pregnant for the second time by her abusive father, trying to overcome a life no one would ever want. We first saw the film at Cannes, finding it overrated but decent, albeit with very strong performance from Sidibe and Mo'nique, as Precious' terrifying mother (though even then we said it had Lifetime Movie tendencies. Our impressions of this manipulative ghetto horror show haven't changed much since then, although the deafening hype and self-aggrandizement of director Lee Daniels threatens to streamroll any good sentiments we have towards the picture. A more recent review we ran basically called it a counterfeit con job full of garish, overdone style. This one should be expanding nationwide fairly quickly, particularly as Oscar season grinds along its merry way. Rotten Tomatoes awards the film with an 86% fresh rating while Metacritic gives it a score of 67.

A couple of years on from his Oscar nod for "Into the Wild," Hal Holbrook is still kicking with "That Evening Sun." First-timer Scott Teems directs Holbrook as a Tennessee widower who escapes from the nursing home his son admitted him to, only to find his farm taken over by a bitter rival. Think "Gran Torino" meets "Shotgun Stories," which actually sounds pretty awesome. If this material is handled with care, we could be in for a nice, atmospheric little drama and with Holbrook in the lead role, a lovable crank of a hero. The film has a 60% fresh rating at RT and a 76 score at Metacritic [ed. Saw this earlier this year, but failed to write a review, sadly. It's a winning little indie, we're glad it finally got released and Hal Holbrook is excellent in it].

Documentary filmmaker Chris Smith ("American Movie," The Yes Men") returns this week with "Collapse." The film's subject, Michael Ruppert, is a former Los Angeles police officer turned reporter who predicted the current economic crisis in a self-published newsletter "From the Wilderness." Taking cues from Errol Morris, Smith interviews Ruppert in a straight-on politely confrontational style, letting the viewer come to their own conclusions about his subject's controversial statements. We hope to get a look at it soon, but Rotten Tomatoes has it at 83% fresh with a Metacritic score of 79.

Finally, in limited release comes "Endgame" from director Pete Travis. There isn't much buzz surrounding the picture, but the apartheid-themed drama has a cast that includes William Hurt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jonny Lee Miller. At the very least, it should be a step up from Travis' last film 2008's "Vantage Point." The film has a 67% fresh rating from RT but Metacritic has never heard of it.

Justin Timberlake, Anna Faris and Dan Aykroyd to Demean Themselves With CGI 'Yogi Bear'

Is this a thing now? In a week where we've already seen Owen Wilson taking on "Marmaduke" and Shawn Levy developing "The Berenstein Bears," yet another CGI talking animal picture is on the way, in the form of Hanna-Barbera's beloved "Yogi Bear"

Eric Brevig, who was behind last year's surprisingly successful Brendan Fraser vehicle "Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D," is directing, from a script by Joshua Sternin and Jeffrey Ventimilia, whose previous credits are "Surviving Christmas" and next year's "The Tooth Fairy." Which basically tells you everything you need to know.

Dan Aykroyd will voice Yogi Bear, and Justin Timberlake will voice Boo Boo, although it's unclear if the movie version will crystallize exactly what the faintly suspicious relationship between the two pants-less bears is.

Anna Faris will continue to squander her obvious comic talents in the live action segment as a documentary maker who follows the bears. Ranger Dave, the bears' long time adversary in stealing picnic baskets, hasn't yet been cast.

Honest to god, the only way we could possibly be interested in this is if it ends with a no-holds barred brawl between Yogi and Winnie the Pooh. Yeah, we're into cartoon bear-baiting. Deal with it.

Amy Heckerling 'Vamps' For Her Next Film

It seems the vampire craze is going to be around for a while yet and its latest victim is Amy Heckerling. The once awesome director of such films as "Fast Times At Ridgemont High," "Clueless," and "National Lampoon's European Vacation" has been in a decade plus long slide, helming such dreck as "A Night At The Roxbury," "Loser" and her latest fiasco, the straight-to-video bomb "I Could Never Be Your Woman."

Today it was announced that Parlay Films (yeah, we've never heard of them either) have acquired the international rights to Heckerling's latest film, a romantic comedy called "Vamps" (*sigh*). The plot is everything you might have guessed from the title, but for the sake of clarity, Heckerling's script is "a modern-day tale of two young female vampires living the good life in New York until love enters the picture and each has to make a choice that will jeopardize their immortality." FML

Krysten Ritter graduates from playing such roles as Poncho Model, Girl on couch, Art History Student and Innocent Bystander (check her IMDB page if you don't believe us) and will be taking one of the female leads, while producers search for another actress who wants to be the next hybrid of Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristen Stewart. No word yet on who will play the pale, poofy haired love interests.

Filming is set to begin in March, and we're just going to go ahead and assume that you will probably be able to find this on DVD by the end of 2010. We've had enough of the vampire craze and just reporting about this film is giving us the urge to crash the set in the spring and expose the film to sunlight/drive a stake through the script/[insert your own vampire analogy here].

J.J. Abrams To Produce 'Micronauts'?

In the midst of a rather depressing Wall Street Journal article about Hollywood's latest gold rush idea of agents at top agencies acquiring rights to toy brands instead of actors, came an interesting nugget. It appears that J.J. Abrams is circling a film adaptation of the Micronauts line of toys, with an eye to produce.

John Fogelman of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment LLC who owns the rights to Micronauts, Candy Land and GI Joe (and reps Abrams) says that, along with Hasbro, "We protect the [intellectual property] as if it's the most precious metal on the planet. The studios -- they don't even get the rights to the script until the day we start principal photography. I can tell you, that's never been done before!" So that's why these toy movies are so shitty! Studios are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at these toy films, and if they have any complaints about the script it's too late because filming is already underway. How come they don't read the script you ask? Well, apparently Hasbro plays for keeps and "studios must greenlight a movie within a number of weeks of acquiring it, or pay a $5 million kill fee directly back to Hasbro." Pretty clever, but no wonder they're all shite.

Abrams seems to have been popping up more and more lately, chatting about the "Star Trek" sequel and producing "Mission Impossible IV" but no formal plans have been put in place. Our guess is that he won't start in earnest on any gigs until "Lost" wraps up its final season early next year. We would imagine "Star Trek" will be first on Abrams' plate and hopefully by then he will have stopped drinking the Micronauts Kool-Aid his agent seems to be supplying, but he'll probably hand it off to one of his minions anyhow. With "Transformers" already dominating the scantily-clad-girl-and-dorky-guy-save-the-world-with-robots-and-big-explosions genre fairly tied up, anything else is only going to look second rate by comparison, though admittedly, "Micronauts" especially the Marvel comic version is much, much different. [via JoBlo]

We'd like to apologize to some of our site readers for the technical difficulties we're going through. The main page isn't coming through clearly for those who use Internet Explorer (and apparently Vista), and the new "Read More" function on blogger, to put it diplomatically, sucks the shit out of a goat on the Palin farm. We encourage you to view the site using either Firefox, Safari or Google Reader instead while we hope (in vain?) that the nice guys at Blogger, who we're trying to be as patient with as possible, somehow realize that Blogger sites using their brand new read more technology — thousands of users really — should probably be readable in some way.

Update: We're removing the read now because it's totally fucked up our site on almost all browsers. Sigh...

Early Footage Of 'Never Let Me Go' Makes Spike Jonze Cry

Last week we gave you a first look report from an early test screening of Mark Romanek's highly anticipated third feature-length, "Never Let Me Go." Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's bestselling novel, the screenplay was written by Alex Garland (of Danny Boyle fame including, "The Beach," "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine") and the cast — Andrew Garfield ("Red Riding" trilogy, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"), Carey Mulligan ("An Education") and Keira Knightley and Sally Hawkins — is rather stellar.

The picture is a futuristic thriller about a trio who grew up in a boarding school with no contact or knowledge of the outside world, until they discover they are clones grown for the sole purpose of organ donation.

Director Spike Jonze, who is buddies with Mark Romanek, recently saw the film, said he hearts it and even said he cried during some of the footage that he saw.

It seems like this film is amazingly under the radar right now. But when I was in England, our good friend Mark Romanek was filming a movie adapted from the book of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and I got to visit him on the set and sneak into his edit room on a weekend and see some of it. I don’t know what I can and cant say about it but I love the story. Even just a few scenes he showed me on their own were really moving. The combination of a science fiction film handled very subtly and naturalistically that also made me cry and is beautifully photographed (Adam Kimmel) is a trifecta. Congrats Mark!! We will post more as we can. Here is a shot stolen from the edit room that gives some sense of the look of the film and Mark at lunch on weekend. We had insane Japanese food at a place called Roca on Charlotte street.

We can't wait to see this. Very highly anticipated for 201o. Fox Searchlight is one of the film's backers and likely the ones distributing it in the U.S. next year. Other cast members include Charlotte Rampling, Nathalie Richard and Andrea Riseborough.

New Trailer & Images: Jim Sheridan's 'Brothers' With Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal & Natalie Portman

As evinced by a post yesterday, Jim Sheridan's "Brothers" is a movie that intrigues and interest us. Everything we've seen hasn't necessarily blown us away — in fact, kind of the opposite — but because we're big fans of the original 2004 Danish film, "Broder," directed by Susanne Bier, which this one is based on, we're curious to see where it goes.

It's essentially a tale of two siblings, one a black sheep (Jake Gyllenhaal in this version), and one the responsible father (Tobey Maguire) who is shipped off to Afghanistan and then believed dead when his helicopter goes down over enemy lines. Trying to do the right thing, the Gyllenhaal character attempts to comfort the wife (Natalie Portman), kids and family of his "deceased" brother, but when the soldier returns home, emotionally scarred and traumatized, the fabric of this new found family is torn apart and tested to its limits.

Or there's also the official synopsis: In a small, snowy Pennsylvania town, a young man (Jake Gyllenhaal) comforts his older brother's wife (Natalie Portman) and their children after her husband (Tobey Maguire) goes missing in Afghanistan.

It's essentially a family drama and while the original is brutal, it's also powerfully memorable.

Scheduled for a December 4 release date, "Brothers" is not much of an Oscar contender so far (if ever), which makes us question its quality, especially considering how good the original is. Anyhow, today 3 new photos have arrived via EW and below is the 2nd trailer from Yahoo. But this trailer — with it's brutally TV-voiced narration — is definitely trying to sell this to a larger audience and it's pretty cloying from minute one.

OK, the trailer itself kind of sucks, but it does appear to follow the narrative exactly the same (full disclosure, we read the new script, but bailed near the end, because we wanted some surprises). This one's been done for a long-ass time too which is never a good sign and without much buzz, all signs point to a disappointment, but with Sheridan involved and the source material being great, ideally this is something we'd love to say was great in the end. Irish rockers U2 contributed two songs to the film and they probably would have been exclusive to the film had it come out a year ago before U2's latest record.

Con Job Of The Year? 'Precious' Is Not Much Of A Treasure

We saw this almost a month ago at NYFF, but were a bit baffled by it, so we just waited for proper release this weekend to file our review.

It's kind of absurd, really, that Precious" (or, if you want to go by its more unwieldy official title "Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire has picked up top honors at Sundance and Toronto. This almost never happens, and as we watched the film at the New York Film Festival one question came over us. To quote the Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers bit on Weekend Update: Really?

Director Lee Daniels may have the film world convinced that his second feature, "Precious," is the indie masterpiece of the year, headed straight for Oscar, but what he's really done is bamboozled their sense of liberal white empathy with an empty headed style that garish and cloying. It's really the con job of the year and it's amazing that some are so blind and forgiving.

Yes, the performances in "Precious" are excellent — leads Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique are probably headed for Oscar nominations, especially the latter — but the film itself is clumsily rendered, shockingly hamfisted in its narrative and exploitatively goes for every manipulative and contrived gag it can. The counterfeit director constantly plays on our sense of guilt and undermines every transitional moment in between scenes with some sort of forced visual conceit that begins to grate as the picture moves along. Every emotional moment is hijacked by some eyesore of a trick. A rape scene? In the middle of it, it flash cuts to a disgusting close-up shot of greasy, fried eggs cooking away in a skillet. It's jarring, in-your-face, and like most of these moments, painfully calls way too much attention to itself. "SYMBOLISM HERE!" It's practically as if Daniels is waving a flag just off screen for you to notice. Yeah, dude, our cinematic gimmicks were like that too... in high school.

The film starts out with titles scrawled in sound-it-out, illiterate writing and then are translated into proper English (we get it, she can't read or write) and the audience gets a portentous whiff of the dubious stylistic choices to come.

From there we're introduced to the titular Precious (an impressively staid Sidibe), an overweight, inerudite Harlem teenager who, as we learn from the opening telegraphed narration, has been impregnated by her father twice. The first child, who is retarded, lives with her grandmother. Precious is pregnant with the second child, living with her equally abusive (mentally, physically, and sexually) mother, ferociously played by Mo'Nique as a full-on hurricane of cruelty and savagery; she's a monster. Expelled from school, Precious soon goes to an alternate learning program, headed by a woman ludicrously named Blu Rain (Paula Patton), much to the condemning chagrin of her mother, who is constantly berating her into giving up on education because she's worthless. This is her opportunity to turn her life around and the one time the direction of the movie goes toward anything even remotely uplifting.

These school scenes, her "higher learning," her empathetic teacher and her peers bring genuine warmth, laughter and soulfulness that is exactly how the entire picture should be in tone, but unfortunately, the picture is all over-the-map.

In fact, the unrelenting bleakness is so overwhelming as the movie grinds on that you wonder where, exactly, the humanity is in this thing and whether the point is to simply jackhammer the audience into sympathy coercion by gunpoint. We won't give anything away, but considering this is set in the mid-1980s, you can expect the twin plagues of crack cocaine and AIDS to show themselves eventually and rain down on our already-battered skulls.

Actually, if we can talk about the "period details" of this thing, they seems dubious to us, if not down right erroneous. Most of the period atmosphere comes from the fact that the soundtrack is peppered with 1980s hip-hop jams, yet any other commitment to the period seems fleeting. Almost every character has access to a computer (in the mid-1980s the only person with a computer was Ferris Bueller — FACT), and during one climactic monologue, a character stops to apply copious amounts of hand sanitizer, something that didn't come into mass favor until after 2002. Right. Small quibbles, but it's little elements like this that take you out of the picture ever so slightly, and since the director has seemingly been doing his best to derail it the entire time...it all adds up.

Daniels' unsubtle aesthetic, if you can call it that, is so assaulting and bloody self-conscious, it becomes a form of emotional blackmail. And it just gets worse and even silly. Why in god's name would Mo'Nique, an uneducated welfare-check touting beast watch Vittorio De Sica's "Two Women" on TV? Because it gives Daniels the haphazard excuse to launch into a random, out of nowhere black-and-white dream sequence where Precious can act out her woes Italiano neo-realism-style. It is actually meant to be a moment of levity, but it just comes across as gaudy and pointless.

In an effort to lighten up the mood, we guess, Daniels has inserted these ridiculous aforementioned fantasy sequences that are crude and self-sabotaging (not that he'd notice). Example: Precious walks by a mirror and instead of seeing herself, she sees a slender white girl. Another example: while her father is raping her, she sees the roof of her room splinter away to reveal the night sky. Shit like this is sloppy, cheap, utterly thickheaded, completely takes you out of the movie, and only adds to the film's vulgar veneer. The feeling crept in more than once that Daniels and his co-conspirators had only a basic understanding of the fundamentals of narrative filmmaking.

Stuttering slo-mo (especially during scenes of violence seemingly to underline how violent it actually is; as if we couldn't tell), jump cuts, dream sequences, jarring cuts or sudden zooms on a character mid-conversation, you name it -- it's a pile-on. And the cinematically-challenged filmmaker is more than happy to roll out any artifice in his cinematic arsenal check list to let you know just how deep and how powerful this movie must be (or just how great he is behind the camera).

A more experienced director (this is Daniels' second feature-length film) would probably realize, "Hey, even Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz are great, maybe I should just capture these acting fireworks," but this filmmaker cannot resist the urge to underscore every other moment with a self-reflexive maneuver that seems to shout throughout, "Hey, look at me, I'm DIRECTING!" It's obnoxious and really disrupts your suspension of disbelief in the story several times. The affected style is hyper aware of itself just as we're hyper-cognizant we're watching a movie and can't get sucked into what should be the heavy emotion of a brutal story laced with small glints of hope.

Still, for all the movie's faults, it still manages to somehow come off as a convincing little drama and that's a gigantic testament to the actors. The cast is surprisingly, uniformly excellent, including almost-unrecognizable turns by Kravitz and Carey (seriously, the latter is so good). And it's their collective presence that bolsters the underlying sentiment of the film beyond the formulaic cliche: no matter how she gets kicked around, Precious stands tall and keeps on going (though let's face it, that's inherent to the picture as well).

There's something classic about that, and genuinely compelling, and it's also a ghetto fab banality. Girl in the hood does good while Mary J. Blige wails some distressed I've-been-wronged R&B melisma in the background; cut to still-going-strong credits. For all its moments of emotional power — especially that final sequence in the welfare office with Mariah that is gut wrenching and is 100% guaranteed to be Mo'Nique's Oscar nomination clip — it's kind of a lousy movie. And the acclaim it has gotten from film festivals is just puzzling. There's some merit to the film to be sure, but it's also extremely uneven, wrought with stereotype and achingly pedestrian at times. [C+] — Drew Taylor

**You also have to read Armond White's review of this thing. He aptly describes it as a "sociological horror show" and says with characteristic hyperbole that's gratuitous, but not without a point, "Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as 'Precious.' "