Stopping in Brazil to promote the upcoming Avatar DVD release, James Cameron, King of the World once more, let the big blue cat out of the big blue bag about the first of two planned sequels to the highest earning film in human history.

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

“Part of my focus in the second film is in creating a different environment – a different setting within Pandora. And I’m going to be focusing on the ocean on Pandora, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won’t be a rainforest. I’m not saying we won’t see what we’ve already seen; we’ll see more of that as well,” he told the LA Times’ Hero blog.

So it seems that Cameron, an avid diver and deep sea explorer, will return once more to the deep. His 1989 film, The Abyss, was not one of his best earners (in fact it was one of his worst), but to some fans, it’s one of his best films. And, though it’s been years since I’ve seen it, I’d include myself in this category.

Cameron went on to say that the goal for the production of Avatar 2 was to make it with half the money in half the time. This makes sense, given that the expensive infrastructure required to bring his Avatars to life is already in place, already paid for (its cost already covered by ginormous off office receipts). But, he said, “…that’s an impossible goal, we won’t accomplish that, but if we can reduce by 25% in both categories, we’ll have really accomplished something.” continue »

It’s a good thing Sir Anthony Hopkins is Teflon® coated. First the remake of The Wolf Man, a film too muddled even for its excellent cast of top-notch actors to make sense of. And now this, The City of Your Final Destination, opening today.

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Original set to open a few months back, the film is Hopkins’ forth pairing with filmmaker James Ivory. Back when Ismail Merchant was alive, the Merchant-Ivory brand (in no small part thanks to screenwriter-novelist Ruth Jhabvala) was as dependable as anything going. Every new film they put out was either an insta-classic, like The Remains of the Day, A Room With a View or Howard’s End, or at least a watchable workhorse type picture. I’m thinking of films like Mr. & Mrs. Bridge and Surviving Picasso, both good, but not great. continue »

Unless you live in one of those enormous swaths of redness out there, where you have to “get in the car” and “drive” from point A to point B, and the multiplex is one of the points B you drive to, a mall-adjacent, or even in-the-mall series of screens all showing the latest three Hollywood blockbusters-in-waiting, when Friday rolls around each week it’s often hard to chose from all the cinematic possibilities that urban life offers us.

And this is where Closely Watched comes in. As a service to you, dear reader, I’m offering this little roundup of what’s on out there this weekend, whether your popcorn will be purchased in the mall, or MoMa.

First things first; here’s what to skip:

The City of Your Final Destination. The pairing of Sir Tony Hopkins and James Ivory has twice brought excellence – Howard’s End and The Remains of the Day – and once brought watchable: Surviving Picasso. But their new film together is a meandering mess featuring the miscast Omar Metwally (Munich), desperately trying to figure out how he ended up in the same movie with Hopkins, Laura Linney, and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who does not here get naked, or sing). You know you’re in trouble when usually good, or even great actors are floundering (I’m talking to you, Laura). Only Hopkins comes out of this disaster unscathed. continue »

Endings are hard. Most films, even the films we know and love, don’t offer endings that we truly remember. But some do. And some films are made by their endings. So here’s a new ‘Closely Watched 11:’ the most memorable movie endings of all time.

Network. 1976. Paddy Chayefsky wrote frequently for live television over his thirty year career and it shows, in this cynical, biting satire of the industry that now invades our homes 24/7 (remember when networks clicked to fuzz or color bars at midnight?). The ending, as envisaged by Sidney Lumet and cut by Alen Heim, culminates in the long fixed shot of four monitors where news, murder, and commercials meld into one mixed-up jumble of entertainment, which was of course the point. It’s the brilliant last nail in the coffin of network news.

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Charlton Heston died two years ago this week. Early in life Heston sat on the Democrats’ side of the fence, ardently supporting the Civil Rights Movement and other left-leaning positions. Later in life, as often happens, he hopped into the Conservatives’ yard, supporting policies that reflected, at least back then, their pov, especially, as we all know, the love love love of a smoking gun.

Love him or hate him, agree or disagree with his political shifts, we can agree to love one things: the man delivered some real hum-dingers of dialogue – with gusto!

The voice didn’t hurt, a chest-shaking Wellesian baritone, a panty-dropper if ever there was one. In honor of Mr. Heston, here’s a look back at a few of his best lines. And yes, three of the five are from the same damned movie. Bonus points for guessing which movie that is (it’s not that hard).

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A while back, Dan $rown (that how he spells his name now) created a “me Tarzan, you Jane” dynamic duo to investigate all the crazy goings on he’d cribbed or dreamed up for his book The Da Vinci Code. It was a parade of silliness, but the author was no dummy. He tied the “oh no you didn’t!” acts of violence and depravity to History and Art, giving them the illusion of depth and resonance. It was a neat and profitable trick.

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“Symbologist” Robert Landgon and sidekick Sophie Neveu look into new murders and old murders and hidden codes in really old paintings that open Pandora’s boxes into our collective perversity. Oh, and some albinos self flagellate. Because albinos are creepy, right? Just ask the Wachowski brothers, or sisters, or whatever the hell they are these days.

And if The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is any indication, late writer Stieg Larsson was a big fan of Mr. Brown’s. In the first of his “Millennium trilogy” books, which bears the more direct title in Swedish, Men Who Hate Women (that ain’t gonna move books off shelves), we get a new Langdon in the personage of sorta disgraced Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist. He’s sorta disgraced because said disgrace allows him to take a gig he probably wouldn’t have otherwise: writing the wealthy if creepy Vanger family’s history. continue »

I recently interviewed actress-writer-rapper-caterer Zoe Lister-Jones for Nylon Magazine. We met at a sun-filled Pain Quotidian over in New York’s far west village, where much of her film, Breaking Upwards, was shot, usually guerrilla-style (though they did have permits, they were rarely asked for them).

Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife

Upwards, the little indie that could, is the very definition of “labor of love.” Lister-Jones and her boyfriend, the actor-director-writer Daryl Wein (Sex Positive) produced the film themselves, for the pitiful sum of fifteen grand. That’s right, fifteen GRAND. Or, as my editor at Nylon noted, “Roughly the cigarette budget on an episode of Mad Men.” So true.

The inspiration for the film came, as it so often does (especially for indies) from life. What I said in my Nylon profile was, “The film is not a case of art imitating life, or life imitating art. It’s a case of art and life melding so perfectly that the boundaries of what’s real, and what’s not, are not even visible.” You see, at some point a couple years back Lister-Jones went to Wein with a proposal, and it wasn’t that kind of proposal. It was something like the opposite. She wanted them to take “days off” from the relationship. Days off on which they could… do whatever the hell they wanted. Leave the toilet seat up all night long? Sure. Drink a whole bottle of wine alone? If you’d like. How about this one, though: take a sponge bath in somebody else’s sweat? Well, yuck, but if you must. Just don’t come home all stinky on the next day on.

Wein was intrigued by the proposal, and not only because of the huge hole that his girl had just ripped in their relationship. continue »

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The year-long struggle to pass health care reform legislation has played out like some of the best nail-biting political thrillers. Bricks chucked through windows from passing Buicks; breathy death threats left on home answering machines; anti-government goobers calling on their ranks to “reload” and git ready to take the fight to all the durn “tyrants” pullin’ our freedoms out from under us like a dad gum rug.

It’s been ugly out there, boys and girls. It’s been scary! And it’s been pretty damned cynical at times.

Over the past fifty years we’ve seen the political thriller genre ebb and flow. The 70’s, reflecting the horrible upheavals of the previous decade, was undoubtedly the golden age. The genre continued to deliver, with fewer great results, in the 80’s and 90’s, but then came 9-11 and the Bush Doctrine and you’d be right in thinking that we are currently right in the middle of a new golden age. continue »

A hint at the fruits of Michael Cera’s collaboration with the men behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz has just appeared online. When I spoke with Cera about this project back when he was promoting Youth in Revolt, he’d just finished shooting the film in Vancouver. “It was the longest shoot I’ve ever done but I had a great time,” he said. “Edgar [Wright] was really true to the graphic novels, but he got his voice in there too. He did an amazing job. It’s gonna be great.” I have to admit, it does look pretty promising.

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Before Shrek, the big green ogre who laid the big green egg, Dreamworks’ entry into the animated movies game had not gone according to plan. First was the lackluster reception of their first two efforts, Antz and The Price of Egypt, then a partnership with Aardman Animation, the fabulous folks behind “Wallace & Gromit” that, despite at least one great movie made together, ended up on the rocks after only a few short years.

But then came the ogre, some nutty African animals, and an ass-kicking panda (and their inevitable sequels) and Dreamworks Animation is suddenly giving the geeks at Disney and Pixar a run for their money.

Their latest animated product is the much-hyped How to Train Your Dragon (the trailer, in 3D, first showed before Avatar), based on the book of the same name. But last night, while I was watching The Office on NBC.com, I saw a new trailer, about fifteen freaking times (when will the online peeps realize that showing – the – exactly – same – ad – over – and – over – is – dumb?), and every single time the announcer called the movie “Dragons,” just Dragons. No “How to Train” nothin’. There was even a corresponding “Dragons” title card in the middle of the trailer, see? continue »