Monday, September 17, 2007

THIS WEEK'S BRIEFING

  • Just got a very cool invite for later this month to a special presentation of 45 minutes of the highly-anticipated, not-yet-complete animated-comedy Bee Movie (DreamWorks) which will be moderated by creator Jerry Seinfeld, along with directors Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner. (The film is set to open nationwide on November 2.)
  • Festivalgoers at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival gave their highest honor, the Audience Award, to the hometown favorite Eastern Promises (Focus Features), which is Canadian director David Cronenberg's latest 'venereal horror' film. Juno (Fox Searchlight), directed by Jason Reitman, was my personal favorite film of the festival, and reportedly finished a close second.
  • Talk about bankable: Jodie Foster has carried yet another movie to a number one box-office opening. The Brave One (Warner Brothers) held off a strong second week showing by 3:10 to Yuma and a mediocre opening by Mr. Woodcock to snatch the top spot. This film—following in the recent footsteps of Panic Room, Flightplan, and Inside Man—reaffirms Foster’s status as one of the few women who can really open a movie strong. (The Foster Allure was recently dissected in a fascinating Sunday New York Times piece by Manohla Dargis that is well worth a read.)
  • My gut feeling is that the immensely talented young actress Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen) is pulling a Britney Spears and driving her career right into the ground by parading around with 'boy'friend Marilyn Manson. Wood, who turned twenty last week, reportedly will be appearing in Manson's upcoming horror film Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll. Obviously, she's entitled to do what she wants to do, but one hopes she is aware that the relationship is not winning her many news fans—and is without question turning off some of her older ones—and the timing could not be worse: Wood has three new films coming out over the next few weeks, King of California (Nu Image), Across the Universe (Revolution) and In Bloom (2929 International).
  • The Boston Film Festival got underway on Friday night with the premiere of Grace Is Gone (The Weinstein Company), a film that stars John Cusack as a man whose wife has been killed in Iraq and who must now find a way to break the news to his two young daughters, well aware that doing so will rob them of their innocence forever. I was disappointed to have to miss the screening, since I was out of town, but I look forward to catching some of the rest of the festival, starting with Wednesday night's premiere of In the Land of Merry Misfits.
  • Shia LeBeouf slipped up at the MTV Video Music Awards and prematurely announced the name of the upcoming fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount) will hit theaters on May 22, 2008. (How important is this? Well, they could call it Indiana Jones and the Trip to the Gynecologist and it would still have a huge opening.)
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