The right and wrong ways to name a movie

It’s baffling that a studio would want to slap a film it’s trying to sell with the most boring, forgettable name conceivable. Is there something going on that we don’t know about? And, for that matter, what distinguishes a good movie title from a bad one? To find out, we called up Matthew Cohen, the founder of Matthew Cohen Creative, a company that has worked on the marketing campaigns of 2007 best picture winner “No Country for Old Men,” 2008 best picture nominee “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and this year’s Oscar favorite, “The King’s Speech.” (…)

What do you make of “Just Go With It” and why do you think that the titles of so many romantic comedies are so impenetrable?

Is it the freshest title in the world? Probably not, but what’s good about it — and this is true of most all romantic comedies — is that it’s inherently optimistic even as it promises some kind of conflict. You want a complication that isn’t going to turn people off. It’s not that these titles are purposefully vague so much as they’re trying to sound as neutral as possible not to alienate audiences. That’s why so many are derived from common expressions or aphorisms. “Something’s Gotta Give,” “It’s Complicated,” titles like that.

{ Salon | Continue reading }

quote { Finagle’s law }

RIP: Peter Yates died this past Sunday in London of heart failure, he was 81. 
Remembered for “Bullitt” and “Breaking Away”, we will always remember him for “Krull.” This 10 minute clips contains flaming-hooved Clydesdales, the ultimate sacrifice of a loyal Cyclops, a mountain of evil that disappears at the rising of twin suns, and the sad death of a young Liam Neeson. What more can you ask of 10 minutes of film?

{ RAW | Watch video | NY Times }

It’s a gig actors call “corpse duty,” and in a shrinking market for jobs in scripted TV, dead-body roles are on the rise.

In the past few years, TV dramas have responded to feature-film trends and HDTV, which shows everything in more realistic detail, by upping the violence and delivering more shock value on the autopsy table.

The Screen Actors Guild doesn’t keep figures on corpse roles, but currently, seven of the top 10 most-watched TV dramas use corpse actors, including CBS’s “CSI,” “NCIS” and spinoff “NCIS: Los Angeles.” The new ABC series “Body of Proof” revolve1s around a brilliant neurosurgeon turned medical examiner who solves murders by analyzing cadavers.

It all means more work for extras, casting agents and makeup artists who supply corpses in various stages of decomposition.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

photo { Christopher Payne, Autopsy theater of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC }

Is there an Oscar curse for women who win the Best Actress award? According to a new study, the answer is a definite yes.

After examining the marital histories of 751 movie stars nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars between 1936 and 2010, researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management found that women who win Oscars in the Best Actress category faced a much greater risk of divorce than men who win Best Actor awards. (…)

The researchers found that on average, Best Actress winners tended to stay married 4.3 years, while the non-winning nominees’ marriages lasted more than twice as long, 9.5 years.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

photo { Greta Garbo photographed by Edward Steichen }

Begotten is a 1991 experimental/horror film, directed and written by E. Elias Merhige. The film deals with the story of Genesis. But as Merhige revealed during Q&A sessions, its primary inspiration was a near death experience he had when he was 19, after a car crash. The film features no dialogue, but uses harsh and uncompromising images of human pain and suffering to tell its tale. It also has no music, instead, the movie is accompanied by the sounds of crickets, and occasionally other sound effects such as grunting and thrashing. Plot The film was shot on black and white reversal film, and then every frame was rephotographed for the look that is seen. The only colors are black and white, with no half-tones. The look is described in the trailer as “a Rorschach test for the eye”. Merhige said that for each minute of original film, it took up to 10 hours to rephotograph it for the look desired. The film opens with a robed, profusely bleeding “God” disemboweling himself, with the act ultimately ending in his death. A woman, Mother Earth, emerges from his remains, arouses the body, and impregnates herself with his semen. { Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Antropophagus, released in the UK as Anthropophagous: The Beast and in the US as Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper, is a 1980 Italian language horror film, directed by Joe D’Amato. Plot A group of tourists arrive on a small Greek island, only to find it almost completely deserted. It seems that the only person still alive there is a blind girl who does not know what has happened to the rest of the island’s town, but is terrified of a man who she describes as smelling of blood. (…) They find a diary inside an abandoned mansion, which tells of a man who was shipwrecked with his wife and child. In order to survive, the man was forced to eat his dead family. This act drove him insane and he went on to slaughter the rest of the island’s inhabitants. (…) Almost the entire group is killed until only a few remain, but one of the survivors manages to overpower him and stab him with a pick axe to the stomach, and before he dies, in one final act of insanity, he attempts to devour himself, by chewing violently on his own intestines. { Wikipedia | Continue reading }

{ Thanks Caitie for the inspiring discussion }

{ Michelangelo Antonioni, Eclipse, 1962 }

{ Production stills. Michelangelo Antonioni shooting Eclipse }

{ Banksy Directs Opening For The Simpsons }

The slasher horror film has been the subject of frequent criticism based on the assumption that female characters in these films are more likely to be the victims of serious, graphic violence that is juxtaposed with explicit sexual imagery. The purpose of this study was to address limitations inherent in previous analyses of slasher films and examine whether gender differences exist in the nature of violent presentations. A content analysis of several indicators of violent and sexual content was conducted using a random sample of 50 slasher films that were released in North America between 1960 and 2007. Findings suggested that there are several significant gender differences in the nature of violent presentations found in slasher films. In general, female characters were more likely to be victims of less serious and graphic forms of violence, but were also significantly more likely to be victimized in scenes involving a concomitant presentation of sex and violence.

{ Sex and Violence in the Slasher Horror Film: A Content Analysis of Gender Differences in the Depiction of Violence by Andrew Welsh, Ph.D., Department of Criminology and Contemporary Studies | PDF }

Turbulence, a film by Prof. Nitzan Ben Shaul of Tel Aviv University, uses complicated video coding procedures that allow the viewer to change the course of a movie in mid-plot. In theory, that means each new theater audience can see its very own version of a film. Turbulence recently won a prize at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival for its technological innovation.

{ AFTAU | Continue reading }

“Overeducation” is something Woody Allen seems to discern more often than the rest of us might. “I know so many people who are well-educated and super-educated,” he told an interviewer for Time recently. “Their common problem is that they have no understanding and no wisdom; without that, their education can only take them so far.” In other words they have problems with their “relationships,” they have failed to “work through” the material of their lives with a trained evaluator, they have yet to perfect the quality of their emotional consumption. Wisdom is hard to find. Happiness takes research. (…)

You could call that “overeducation,” or you could call it one more instance of “people constantly creating these real unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves that keep them from dealing with more terrifying unsolvable problems about the universe,” or you could call it something else. Woody Allen often tells interviewers that his original title for Annie Hall was “Anhedonia,” which is a psychoanalytic term meaning the inability to experience pleasure.

{ The NY Review of Books | Continue reading }

photo { Sylvain-Emmanuel Prieur }

How do you convert the whizz-bang acrobatics of Spider-Man into a live Broadway show? (…)

The show – directed by the award-winning creator of The Lion King, Julie Taymor, and with music by Bono and The Edge of U2 – had to be stopped five times to correct faulty technical equipment. (…) Reeve Carney, playing the superhero, was left swinging helplessly above the audience.

It took stage hands almost a minute to catch Carney by the feet to drag him down, and later there was some heckling.

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

Every scene of the film utilizes the six colours of the spectrum, with manipulations of hue, value and chroma, according to the nature of the specific location. Colour in Eyes Wide Shut often has a symbolic role to play, communicating visually, for example, a psychological aspect of a character. Most of EWS was filmed using existing light sources such as the lamps that are visible in the frame. The amount of light reflecting off a shape determines the colour and vividness of its hue; and as a result of EWS using low light levels a series of optical illusions relating to hue results. Depending on the amount of light and the angle of the camera, a shape can be here one shade and then there another shade. Herein is a list of the most noticeable examples:

a. In Ziegler’s bathroom in 17, to the far left there is a smallish square (aftershave?) bottle on a shelf under a mirror. The first time the bottle becomes visible, near the beginning of the scene, the liquid inside is a distinctly high value chromatic blue. At the end of the scene, the camera angle having shifted, the liquid in the bottle, still on the left-hand side of the screen, now looks distinctly light green.

{ Notes on Eyes Wide Shut, a film by Stanley Kubrick | a shot-by-shot commentary of Part I of the film by J. S. Bernstein | PDF }

Although it’s set in New York, there are only the most fleeting glimpses of the real city, courtesy of a Second Unit.

The ‘Long Island’ mansions were found in the Home Counties, the ‘Greenwich Village’ streets constructed at Pinewood Studio or faked in corners of central London.

The exterior of the mansion of Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack, replacing Harvey Keitel), is the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, East 37th Street at Madison Avenue in the real New York.

The party interior, though, where Dr Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) attends to a guest after she ODs on a speedball, was filmed at Luton Hoo, Hotel, Golf and Spa, near Luton in Bedfordshire.

The interior of ‘Club Sonata’, the New York jazz club, is Madame JoJo’s, Brewer Street, in Soho, London.

Most of the ‘Greenwich Village’ street scenes were shot on huge and elaborately detailed sets at Pinewood (the proliferation of T-junctions is a dead giveaway), but for a few shots, London streets were dressed as New York.

{ Movie-locations.com | Continue reading }

Kubrick — born and raised in the Bronx but for many years an expatriate who refused to fly–didn’t go near Manhattan in the 90s, and the movie clearly reflects that. (…)

The film credits a lighting cameraman but no director of photography, which has led critic Kent Jones to surmise correctly that Kubrick shot most of it himself.

{ Jonathan Rosenbaum }

illustration { Lil Fuchs }

Flops lose studios insane amounts of money. Flops have irrevocably hurt the careers of filmmakers and actors, with the bewildering exception of John Travolta. (…)

A big enough bomb can have a permanent, negative impact not just on someone’s career, but on the entire film industry: Michael Cimino’s notorious 1980 flop “Heaven’s Gate” was so expensive ($44 million, a fortune at the time) and disastrous (earning almost nothing back) it essentially bankrupted United Artists. It only took one flop for Cimino, fresh from winning best picture and best director Oscars for “The Deer Hunter,” to go from the hottest filmmaker in Hollywood to persona non grata. Cimino’s career never really recovered; he hasn’t directed a film since 1996’s “The Sunchaser” and today is a veritable recluse.

So it might seem surprising, or even perverse, to suggest that there’s something redeeming about flops — even, in fact, that we need them. (…)

An era’s great flops serve countless functions in pushing the art and industry of filmmaking forward. They introduce technological innovations. They help filmmakers and actors — those that manage to work again, at least — learn how to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. And for the people involved in them, flops are something more than a wake-up call: They can even rescue a career.

{ Boston Globe | Continue reading }

This is the story of a Procedural.

So I’m at a meeting with a producer the other day and he’s pitching me a tv idea. As way of emphasizing why I need him and his idea, he brings forth a piece of paper. On it, my credits. He doesn’t actually hand it over to me but he says this:

PRODUCER: I’ve been looking over your credits, pretty impressive.

ME: Thanks, we try.

PRODUCER: Seems to me you’re just missing one thing from these credits. And I’m gonna tell you what it is.

ME: Please do.

At which point he turns the piece of paper towards me and I see he’s written in bold black marker near the top, pointing to the list: BIG FUCKING HIT TV SHOW.

ME: Well, yes, I am missing that. Very true. I think about that a lot.

PRODUCER: That’s all right. Because I’m here to change all that.

{ I find your lack of faith disturbing | Continue reading | via cardhouse }

photo { Glenn Glasser }

My problem is Judy loves chick flicks.

I can’t forget when she forced me to see Brokeback Mountain and insisted that I look at icky scenes that no red-blooded American boy like me should have to see.

No man (and that includes Alan Alda) is so sensitive that he can sit through these long-winded duller-than-dirt chick movies. And yet no man is ready to admit how much he hates these films. Why? For fear of sexual reprisals delivered in the form of “Not this year, dear. I have a headache.”

And do you want to know how far this sexual intimidation has come? I still have nightmares about the night in 1996 when we went to see The English Patient (the single worst movie I ever sat through in my life).

I remember the night Judy and I went to see this movie. The East Hampton Cinema was filled with couples. The women all fluttery . . . the men all reserved.

I remember looking at Judy and, quite frankly, I was turned on. I figured it was an early movie and the night was young and so was Judy. I planned on drinks and soft music and, you know . . .

Judy gets very emotional at movies and that night she was in fine form. She started to sob the minute they put on that computer-animated horror that tells you to eat popcorn and drink Coca-Cola but don’t talk, etc., etc.

“Judy,” I whispered. “Why are you crying? The movie hasn’t started yet.”

“I know but it’s going to be so . . . so . . . sad.”

Well, in The English Patient, Ralph Fiennes plays a Nazi who is badly burned in a plane crash. So the whole movie consists of this guy who I swear is so burned that he looks exactly like the creature in that monster film of the ’50s, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I knew from the beginning of the movie he was going to die. Spending three hours watching a guy who is made up to look like a burned-to-a-crisp monster dying is not my idea of a fun Saturday night.

There were a lot of other story lines and characters in the movie – one duller than the other. The burned guy kept remembering this love affair he had with this married woman who was, you guessed it, his best friend’s wife.

Well, this was not one of those wham-bam affairs. No sir. This was slow. So slow that they managed to do the impossible . . . make sex boring. And the more the nurse who was taking care of the guy who was burned to a crisp heard the story of the affair, the more she was interested in climbing into bed with the crisp.

At one point I said to myself, “If she goes near this guy, I’m going to be sick. The only thing that is going to save me from throwing up is that this movie is so boring I’m starting to doze off.”

That’s when Judy poked me.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” she declared with tears streaming down her face. Her tone told me that if I told the truth I could forget about the drinks and soft music later. So I did what any red-blooded young man would do under the circumstances. I lied. “It’s wonderful . . . wonderful. It’s the best thing I’ve seen in years,” I said.

“How come you’re not crying?” she whispered.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I was so caught up in the story that I guess I forgot to cry,” I said.

{ Jerry Della Femina | Continue reading }

{ Jean Eustache, The Mother and the Whore , 1973 }

{ Colonel Rosa Klebb, a high ranking member of the feared Russian counter-intelligence agency SMERSH, and main antagonist from the James Bond film and novel From Russia with Love | Wikipedia | more }

The Windmills of Your Mind, music written by Michel Legrand, with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman; lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman; from the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair.

Noel Harrison performed the song for the film score. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1969 (Harrison’s father, the British actor Rex Harrison, had performed the previous year’s Oscar-winning “Talk to the Animals”).

The opening two melodic sentences were adapted from Mozart’s second movement from his Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Lyrics and guitar chord transcription | Listen | Download }

{ The Mad Bomber, 1973 | more }