Craig's MovieBlog

It’s Like a Really Bad Disney Movie

“I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago.  That’s an important… I want to know that.  I really do.  Because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes.” (link)

The Bourne Ultimatum: The Abridged Script

I love The Editing Room.  Here's The Bourne Ultimatum: The Abridged Script, and a sample:

MATT DAMON: Will you help me get my life back and betray your organization?

JULIA STILES: The same organization that has killed people for betraying them, with my assistance?

MATT DAMON: Yeah, that one.

JULIA STILES: Sure, why not? I definitely trust you, even though the last time I saw you, you held a gun to my head and made me cry in a subway broom closet.

Fun With George, Brad and Matt

It's interviews like this that make me want to go see Oceans 13.

TIME: When you have so many stars in a movie, and it's the third in a trilogy, how do you keep it from going off the rails and becoming Cannonball Run 3?
CLOONEY: Well, we like to think it's more like Lord of the Rings, in the trilogy sense.
PITT: Wait, what's wrong with Cannonball Run 3?
DAMON: I don't even think there was a Cannonball 3. Look, you have us confused with deep thinkers. You've already put more thought into why we did the movie than we did.
CLOONEY: You're thinking that we're not just whores for money. There's your mistake.

Matt Damon Does Matthew McConaughey

There's nothing more I need to add.  Fantastic.

The Departed Quotes

Trading email with a friend today reminded me that I haven't written about The Departed since seeing it...  Simply put, what a great, great movie.  Absolutely a home run in every sense of the word.  Easily my favorite film of the year along with Little Miss Sunshine.

This was Martin Scorsese just having fun, working in his wheelhouse (not yearning for an Oscar a la The Age of Innocence or The Aviator), with just a good old-fashion crime/mob movie wrapped in a rock solid cat-and-mouse puzzle.

On top of that, however, were two key pieces: First, the cast was incredible across the board.  While it's easy to take Nicholson for granted, you have to take pause and appreciate what Leo brought to the table (constantly on the verge of losing it), Damon (watching his world crumbling but manipulating everything and keeping his cool), but even moreso... hats off to Alec Baldwin and specifically Mark Wahlberg, who had the line of the entire movie.  When another cop asks who he is, he responds, "I'm the guy doing my job.  You must be the other guy."

I can't wait to use that one at work.

Which brings me to key ingredient #2: the script is fantastic, and surprisingly, it's incredibly funny.  The film is so intense that it needed the comic relief of the Boston boys breaking each other's balls, and the attacks on each other are so brutal that they're blisteringly funny.

To wit: here are my favorite lines from Wahlberg and Baldwin, and you can find the rest at IMDB.com.  (Warning: Bad Language Ahead):

Mark Wahlberg's character (Dignam):

"I'm the guy doing my job.  You must be the other guy."

"Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe fuck yourself."

"You may play a tough guy for your gangster friends, but you don't get nothing past me, you lace-curtain Irish fucking pussy!"

"No, you don't know. Because if someone like you knew what we did, that would make us cunts. Are you calling us cunts?"

Alec Baldwin's character (Ellerby):

"I'm gonna go have a smoke right now. You want a smoke? You don't smoke, do ya, right? What are ya, one of those fitness freaks, huh? Go fuck yourself."

"Yes, those. I don't know what they are.  You don't know what they are. Who gives a fuck?"

"Marriage is an important part of getting ahead. It lets people know you're not a homo. A married guy seems more stable. People see the ring, they think 'at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch.' Ladies see the ring, they know immediately that you must have some cash, and your cock must work."

Together:

"Go fuck yourself."
"I'm tired from fucking your wife."
"How is your mother?"
"Good.  She's tired from fucking my father."

The Oscars Already?

Movie City News has posted a Pre-Season, Pre-Toronto, Pre-Oscar Preview, and only Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers received a vote from every analyst.  Dreamgirls missed on just one ballot.

Here's the top 10... in August, for what it's worth:

1. Flags of our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Paul Haggis and William Broyles Jr.
2. Dreamgirls, directed by Bill Condon, based on the Broadway show, starring Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, and Beyonce Knowles
3. The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Paul Attanasio, starring George Clooney (of course) and Cate Blanchett
4. Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett (again)
5. World Trade Center, directed by Oliver Stone, starring Nicolas Cage
6. The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese, remake of Infernal Affairs, starring everyone: Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, etc...
7. All the King's Men, directed by Steven Zaillan, starring everyone else: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, James Gandolfini, Patricia Clarkson, etc...
8. A Good Year, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe and Albert Finney
9. United 93, directed by Paul Greengrass - the only film on the list already released
10. The Queen, directed by Stephen Frears, starring Helen Mirren

Sports Guy Interviews "The Guys Who Wrote Rounders"

If you loved Rounders, and have seen it 26 times on cable like I have, this is required reading:

• Part One
• Part Two

And if you need to know the depth of Bill Simmons' insanity, read his pitch for Rounders 2.  I hope for his sake he was kidding:

Here's my pitch: Mike McD (two-time runner-up in the World Series of Poker in 1999 and 2003) is living at the Palms Casino in Vegas and making a living playing in televised tournaments, running his own online Web site and ripping off celebrities and athletes whenever they come into town. He's a multi-millionaire, a success by any measure; he even hangs out with the Maloofs and Ron Artest, owns a 5 percent stake in the Kings, and dates a former actress (played by Heather Graham) who gets naked with him in a torrid sex scene in the first 10 minutes. And just when he's preparing for the 2007 World Series of Poker, Worm shows up in his life again, along with Worm's brother, Gerbil (played by Ben Affleck, who was available). They're in some deep trouble, the Russian mob is after them for stealing a suitcase of heroin or something.

Being the loyal friend that he is, Mike McD gets dragged into the situation and ends up having sex with Famke Janssen and her sister, played by Anna Kournikova (in a torrid three-way in a hot tub at the "Real World" suite in the Palms) to convince Famke to call off the Russian mob. But Famke slips him the date-rape drug, and before Mike McD wakes up, she's transferred $3 million of his money from his computer to Teddy KGB. Plus, Heather Graham walked in during the three-way (unbeknownst to Mike McD) and decided to move out. Now he's broke and single. When he wakes up, Teddy KGB calls to tell him, "I have your three million, you have to play me for it, I want revenge for the last time we played."

But Mike McD says, "You know what, I'm not playing this game. I don't care about my $3 million any more, and I don't care about Worm or Gerbil -- kill them both, they were crummy friends, anyway. I'm winning my three million back in the World Series of Poker, and then some. But first, I have to go to Cheetahs for the next 20 hours and spend my last $5,000 on lap dances."

So that's the next 15 minutes of the movie -- Mike getting lap dances and drinking Rolling Rocks in the Cheetah's champagne room, followed by the shocking revelation that Gretchen Mol is working there after getting fired from her law firm. He gets her number, but not before she gives him the obligatory, "You're wasting your life" speech. From there, Mike McD goes right to the World Series of Poker, where he ends up at the final table facing Phil Ivey (played by Tiger Woods), Ron Artest (played by O.J. Simpson), Teddy KGB (Malkovich), Worm (Norton), Gerbil (Affleck), Johnny Chan (playing himself) and the Cinderella story of the tournament, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons (played by George Clooney in an unbilled cameo).

And Mike McD gradually knocks everyone out until it's just him and Gerbil, setting up the Damon-Affleck scenario that everyone has been waiting for ... and even though the script calls for Mike McD to win, Damon ends up ad-libbing from the script and letting Affleck win because he feels bad about everything that's happened to Affleck since Armageddon. But he still made enough second place money ($3 million) to replace what he lost, so he's happy, and the movie ends with a torrid sex scene with Mike McD and Gretchen Mol, followed by him breaking up with her and telling her that he never liked her in the first place. The end.

Jason Bourne Sequels

I clearly understand that it's not exactly news that there may be sequels to the Jason Bourne franchise.  I mean, when has a studio stopped making films in a series that have not only been critical faves, but also successes at the box office?

But what I really want to point you to, is one of my new favorite blogs, I Watch Stuff!, where they editorialize brilliantly on this Matt Damon headline:

Some good news for fans of the series. Let's just hope Bourne doesn't "find out who he is" the way I did: with a half-bottle of vodka, two issues of Hustler, a hand mirror, and a lot of crying.

So Was It a Good Weekend or a Bad Weekend?

From showbizdata.com:

The latest Harry Potter movie may have dropped 47 percent in its second weekend; five new films couldn't do as well as two new ones a year ago; one of them, Rent, may have opened like a house on fire, but it quickly fizzled out.  Daily Variety may have reported that for the first time in eight years, only one film earned more than $20 million over the Friday-Sunday period.

And yet, despite all that bad news, if estimates hold, the Thanksgiving box office will rank second only to 2000's as the highest ever for the holiday.

Opening in limited release in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto, the George Clooney-Matt Damon thriller Syrania took in an astounding $553,372 in just five theaters over the five days. Its three-day take of $372,725 ($74,429 per theater) was the best ever for a Thanksgiving weekend, Variety observed.

Oscars 2006

It's November 7th, 2005, and it's very possible that we have not seen a single film that will be nominated for Best Picture.  Sure, there's been Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, A History of Violence, Crash, Jarhead, and Cinderella Man, but there's a good chance that none of those will hit their mark, and all five nominees will come from the remaining pool of movies that haven't yet been released (and there are only 8 weekends left in 2005) to qualify.

Frankly, I think this sucks.  We end up with crappy movies all year long, then the studios cram everything into November and December, but if those films don't get the boost of a nomination, they're gone... dead on the vine.  Good luck seeing them in a theater versus Blockbuster.

Anyway, here's a piece in the New York Daily News from Jack Mathews about the movies to come this year.  Also, I'm including Jack's top 10 hopefuls:

1. Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Eric Bana
2. Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
3. Memoirs of a Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall, starring Ziyi Zhang and Ken Watanabe
4. The New World, directed by Terrence Malick, starring Colin Farrell
5. The Producers, directed by Susan Stroman, starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, and Will Ferrell
6. Mrs. Henderson Presents, directed by Stephen Frears, starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins
7. Walk the Line, directed by James Mangold, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon
8. King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson, starring Adrien Brody, Jack Black, and Naomi Watts
9. Syriana, directed by Stephen Gaghan, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon
10. Match Point, directed by Woody Allen, starring Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers