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Quantum of Solace star Daniel Craig mixed with princes William and Harry at the Royal cosmos premiere of the new James Bond film in London last night.
The actor hit the red carpet in Leicester Square with his arm in a sling, having injured his soldier, and accompanied by long-time partner Satsuki Mitchell.
"This is a great, exciting, action-packed Bond movie with a lot of feeling and good feeling in it," he told BBC News.
And whenever asked why it was important the Quantum of Solace premiere be held in London, he replied: "Because it’s Bond - it’s as British as it could be."
Directed by Marc Forster, the 22nd Bond film picks up immediately after Casino Royale, making it the first sequel in the franchises’ 4o-year history.
Though its name is taken from an Ian Fleming short novel, Quantum of Solace sees Bond out for revenge for the betrayal of his girlfriend Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and on the trail of the visionary Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) and his Quantum organisation, who aim to overthrow South American governments.
As always, Bond is joined by fresh female companions, by Russia actress Olga Kurylenko saying the London premiere was "overwhelming".
British starlet Gemma Arterton, who plays an MI6 agent, added: "I can’t get my chief round it, I feel like I’ve gone into some weird sleep - it’s fantastic.
"I never thought I’d meet royalty so I’ve got to scrub up and be on my best behaviour."
Quantum of Solace is released on Friday October 31st.
Enlarge By Zade Rosenthal, Sony Pictures godly expert and scientist: Tom Hanks stars with Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer in Angels & Demons, due May 15. 
Angels at the Vatican and inside Roman churches. But Brown’s Angels, which includes the murder of two cardinals, was quickly shut down by the church. "This movie was strangely harder to shoot than Da Vinci Code, even though there’s less controversy," says producer Brian Grazer. Exteriors were shot quickly in Rome, and elaborate sets were built to replicate the Vatican and other churches at Los Angeles studios.”> EnlargeBy Zade Rosenthal, Sony PicturesIntelligently designed: Filmmakers had hoped to shoot Angels at the Vatican and inside Roman churches. But Brown’s Angels, which includes the murder of two cardinals, was readily shut down by the church. “This movie was strangely harder to propel than Da Vinci Code, even though there’s less controversy,” says producer Brian Grazer. Exteriors were shot quickly in Rome, and elaborate sets were built to replicate the Vatican and other churches at Los Angeles studios.
EnlargeBy Scott Garfield, Sony PicturesFaith under fire: Ewan McGregor plays Carlo Ventresca, the faithful servant to the church during the papal conclave in Vatican incorporated town. Grazer says the movie examines the conflict between science and God, particularly when faith is tested by violence. “This is the hardest movie Ron (Howard) has ever shot,” Grazer says. “Not only because of being exiled from the Vatican, but it’s darker subject matter.”
Angels. Grazer describes their earlier film, The Da Vinci Code, as "a puzzle movie. It wasn’t a contemporary movie. It was a little static. This one is more dynamic. It’s an action movie."”> EnlargeBy Zade Rosenthal, Sony PicturesDigging deeper: Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, left), Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Chartrand (Thure Lindhart) and Carlo Ventrasca (Ewan McGregor) examine clues in Angels. Grazer describes their earlier film, The Da Vinci Code, as “a puzzle movie. It wasn’t a contemporary movie. It was a little static. This one is more dynamic. It’s an action movie.” By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY Angels & Demons, the follow-up film to The Da Vinci Code, has frequent of the elements of the 2006 movie: star, director, a little controversy.
What it doesn’t share with its predecessor, filmmakers would like you to know, is Tom Hanks’ hairstyle.
“It’s totally different” from Hanks’ slicked-back coif of the original, insists producer Brian Grazer. “It’s better. Everything is more contemporary. “
The adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel continues the sleuthing adventures of Robert Langdon (Hanks), a Harvard expert in religious symbols who discovers a conspiracy to destroy the Vatican.
Da Vinci collected $758 million worldwide, but even Grazer says the movie moved a little slowly. Angels, by contrast, sprints from crypts, catacombs and cathedrals.
In adapting the hugely successful Da Vinci novel, “I think we may have been too reverential toward it,” Grazer says. “We got all the facts of the book right, but the movie was a little long and stagey.”
In Angels, opening May 15, “Langdon doesn’t stop and give a speech,” Grazer says. “When he speaks, he’s in motion.”
Set in and around the Vatican, Brown’s Angels includes the murders of cardinals, who are mutilated with mysterious symbols. Church officials banned the crew from shooting in key locales, at times revoking permits that had been approved, Grazer says.
“Weirdly, even granting there was such much controversy on The Da Vinci Code, we were able to shoot everywhere,” Grazer says. “We were in London, France, so it was harder to catch us.”
Because Angels is largely set at the Vatican, “we were pretty much in exile from the religious epicenter of the world,” he says.
Da Vinci Code was rebuked by the church and others for its depiction of history. The fact that Angels didn’t spark as much debate makes its allure less assured.
Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracking firm Media by dint of. Numbers says Angels will need to impress critics if it hopes to find success.
“Da Vinci Code didn’t get great reviews, but had controversy to help the box office,” he says. “Better reviews could make up that difference for Angels.”
That doesn’t mean Angels won’t generate any controversy. The film centers on an act of terrorism at the Vatican and examines the tension between science and faith.
“We’re living in a world that’s much more unstable,” Grazer says. “Therefore, our energy is focused on belief. This looks at what would happen when you have an act of terrorism designed to undermine that belief.”
Despite the contemporary topics, Grazer says the movie has no political undertones. “Both parties, through different means, don’t want terrorism to exist in the world,” he says.
As on the side of any evolution-vs.-intelligent design parallels, “I’ll leave that to others.”
But he’s happy to talk about Hanks’ head — and body.
“I’m telling you, he’s got a scene where he’s dizziness in Speedos, and he looks fantastic,” Grazer says. “He’s going to add 10 years to his career with that scene alone, just watch.”
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.
Enlarge AP Director Jon Favreau, left, and star Robert Downey Jr., will moil together again on two superhero films Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Downey Jr. is strapping upon the body his metal suit to join the superhero team effort The Avengers in addition to Iron Man 2.
Downey is reprising his role as billionaire genius Tony Stark from last summer’s blockbuster Iron Man. The sequel is fit May 7, 2010, and The Avengers is scheduled for July 15, 2011, Marvel Studios announced Tuesday.
The movies are part of a four-picture deal between Downey and Marvel.
Iron Man director Jon Favreau is returning to direct Iron Man 2 and serve as executive producer on The Avengers, which will team the guy in the metal suit with Marvel Comics heroes the Hulk, Captain America, Thor and others.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not have existence published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.
Enlarge By Carlo Allegri, AP “It kind of democratized filmmaking in some ways”: Kevin Smith, director of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, broke new ground in independent filmmaking with 1994’s Clerks. 
Porno: Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks star in Kevin Smith’s latest comedy, which opens Friday.”> EnlargeBy Darren Michaels, The Weinstein Co.They’re making a Porno: Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks star in Kevin Smith’s latest comedy, which opens Friday. By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY MONROEVILLE, Pa. — The amateur moviemakers walk out of a coffee shop into a winter dawn, hauling a small digital camera, a tripod and a booming mike made out of a hockey stick. They’re just happy to fall upon their footage is in point of convergence.
It’s an early scene from Zack and Miri Make a Porno, opening Friday.
Zack (Seth Rogen) begins eagerly outlining his plans for the next evening’s secret shoot at the coffee shop, and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) looks in wonder at her slacker-ish friend. She has never seen his ambitious side before. “It suits you,” she says — and suddenly everything is different between them.
Across the parking lot, filmmaker Kevin Smith is watching the performance on a monitor, slumped in a giant coat that holds back the morning’s bitter chill. He has seen this play out before, in real the breath of one’s nostrils.
A no-account guy gets an idea, recruits his friends for heal, gets a camera and shoots a movie after hours at the position of business where he mindlessly runs a register for minimum wage. Even the hockey-stick boom mike is familiar.
“Yeah … it’s totally the story of Clerks,” Smith says.
Maybe more important, Zack and Miri is also totally the story of untold aspiring filmmakers who have since followed in his footsteps.
Clerks “kind of democratized filmmaking in some ways,” Smith says. “The movie doesn’t look like much because we were rank amateurs, but that means people watching can say, ‘If this dude can work out it and this counts as a movie, I want to be a filmmaker, too.’ “
Clerks, which was made by Smith for $27,575, not only launched his career, but it also is often credited for inspiring a generation of do-it-yourself filmmakers as well as blazing a trail in Hollywood for nasty-and-sweet comedies.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Judd Apatow and Juno’s Jason Reitman have cited Smith as influences. Rogen has, too, though Smith thought the actor would drop his interest in Zack and Miri after he made it big in Apatow’s Knocked Up.
“I don’t know why he thought that,” Rogen says. “It only feels right. In a lot of ways, our comedy comes from Kevin. I have often, and Judd has also, talked about how Clerks was one of the first movies showing guys talking how we rumor. It seems very simple, but it was a revelation in many ways for guys who wanted to write comedy.”
Clay Nichols, a former high school theater pastor and co-author of the book Filmmaking for Teens, says Smith has sent a positive message to many aspiring filmmakers.
“Kids have seen those movies and think about them. They quote his movies all the time,” he says. “And the aesthetic he used, the style of dialogue, the characters he created made filmmaking really accessible even before YouTube made it obvious you could make a short movie and have a lot of people see it. The cool thing about Kevin Smith movies is he shows that production values aren’t the point — the story is.”
In Zack and Miri, a couple of teenagers Smith also inspired even turn up on screen. Nick Lombardi and Chris Milan, two Pittsburgh-area high school students who post silly home-video sketches to YouTube, play obnoxious guys who take a voyeur video of Miri wearing “granny panties” as she’s changing her clothes and, of course, post the footage online.
“Having those dudes on the set was kind of fun because between takes they were like, ‘What’s that do? How’s that work?’ ” Smith says. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I went from being a rank amateur to being a teacher of sorts.’ It made me feel really experienced. Good, but old.”
Now that Smith is joking in Zack and Miri about his do-it-yourself past, he’s on track to break his personal best at the box office.
Filmmakers such as Apatow who followed Smith’s sensibility routinely cross the $100 million mark. But Kevin Smith films rarely clear $30 million. Zack and Miri could be the film to change that.
With Apatow’s films, Smith says, “the only kind of comedy I know how to make became vastly more commercial than we were ever able to make it. The old standby of, ‘We make ‘em cheap and even though they don’t gross huge, they still turn a profit’ becomes, ‘Hey man, you got no excuse now … because this genre is viable.’ “
Jeff Bock, a box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations Co., says Smith could indeed break into a bigger bracket.
“It’s funny that a movie with the word ‘porno’ in the title is Smith’s most mainstream film, but it is,” he says. “This is a chance for Kevin Smith to break out of that $25 million to $30 the great body of the people — tops — grosses. He could go to 75, 80, or $90 very great number.”
Smith’s prediction: The word “porno” in the title and his tendency to push the limits of taste could hold him back some. And, he says, that’s OK — he’s not in it solely for a $100 million payday.
“If it came, I’d in fact take it. But I am a bare-minimum kind of guy,” he says with a laugh.
Really big comedies, Smith adds, “just don’t go into creepy areas that I in the same manner as to go into.” And there’s one scatological scene at the end of Zack and Miri he knows will cost him with the tamer crowd.
“A smarter man would’ve been like, ‘I can do without the (expletive) scene,’ ” he says. “For me, I was like, ‘it’s going to turn more people off. … But it’s going to make my fans go (crazy).’ “
Whatever the outcome, his next movie will be a change of pace — a dread film (and partway political satire) called Red State— but he expects to stick to the scrappy filmmaking roots he says changed his life. “When I realized that I wanted to be a filmmaker, that became my passion. My demeanor completely changed, and people around me noticed,” Smith says.
He goes back to the line Miri says to Zack as they emerge from that first night of filming. “Those were literally the words out of my girlfriend’s mouth: ‘I’ve never seen you exist ambitious.’ I was like, ‘Is that what it is? It feels good.’ “
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone account, city and set forth for verification.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Screen Actors Guild officially stands opposed to the California ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage.
After weeks of being criticized for not contributing enough to defeat Proposition 8, members of the film-TV industries have recently stepped up their contributions — financial and otherwise — to fight Proposition 8, and on Tuesday a union committee voted to oppose the indefinite quantity.
“No actor should have to disclose his or her sexual preference in order to get soundness and retirement benefits,” said SAG Chairwoman Anne-Marie Johnson. “centre of life legally married means everyone is treated the same. It’s matter that we take a bear to protect all actors from discriminatory hiring practices and provide same-sex couples access to benefits.”
SAG said the organization does not vouch for national candidates, but the actors union often takes positions on ballot initiatives. The union’s Colorado branch previously announced it is opposing Amendment 47, a right-to-work measure on the state’s November voting-ball which would bar unions from requiring nonunion workers to pay dues.
In the last two weeks, several SAG members have personally donated money to defeat Proposition 8, according to state fundraising records, including: Two and a Half Men actor Jon Cryer ($10,000); Bones actress Emily Deschanel ($2,000); The New Adventures of Old Christine actress Wanda Sykes ($3,500) and In Plain Sight actress Mary McCormack ($3,000).
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, confer comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.
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By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY The spiritual world clashes with the fresh one, check with exemption from restraint.. And Frosty the Snowman is the catalyst.
Early in the drama Doubt, an Oscar hopeful that opens in limited release Dec. 12, pair Sisters of Charity (Meryl Streep, Amy Adams) get into a disagreement with the parish priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) overseeing their Bronx parish school in 1964.
Hoffman’s Father Flynn, an innovating force, would like to freshen the Christmas pageant through more secular songs. Streep’s Sister Aloysius, a rigid woman, can only contain her contempt. Meanwhile, Adams’ upbeat Sister James is quietly unnerved. “Frosty the Snowman espouses a pagan belief in magic,” Sister Aloysius says flatly.
Of course, the disagreement is in regard to more than a song. Sister Aloysius suspects Father Flynn of inappropriate relations with a close examiner and becomes determined to destroy him. But is she mistaking his kind system of created things for something sinister, and is her vengeance fueled by her fear of change?
These questions, and the verbal tug of war between the two figures, led the Broadway version of Doubt to win a Tony and writer/director John Patrick Shanley a Pulitzer Prize.
“The story is a time machine to take you back to some place that at first may seem exotically different,” Shanley says. “That was a time of great certitude, where the certainty began to shake and crack.”
He says the story is not as much about church politics, or the abuse scandals, as it is a question about the virtue or vice of doubt.
“As the movie goes on,” he says, viewers “have to re-examine initial assumptions over and over again until the very end of the film. Afterward, I hope, they continue to argue and reassess everything they just dictum.”
Shanley, an Oscar winner for the Moonstruck screenplay, says the play was inspired by his own childhood in the Catholic schools of the Bronx.
He even got his own Sister James, his first-grade teacher, now 70, to advise adhering the film’s authenticity. “She didn’t just know what went on among the nuns at that time. … She knew what went on in that exact church chide I went to,” he says.
His own knowledge was limited as a boy. He says with a laugh, “Oh, I was thrown out.”
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For blazon consideration in the gazette, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.
Enlarge Fox Searchlight Pictures Sweet stuff: Tristan Wilds, left, and Dakota Fanning bottle honey. around THE MOVIE
The Secret Life of Bees
* * 1/2 (out of four)
Stars: Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo, Alicia Keys, Paul Bettany
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Rating: PG-13 for thematic stuff and some violence
Running spell: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide
Based on the popular spiritually tinged novel by Sue Monk Kidd, the movie version is less treacly and more straightforward than the book. As directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball), it becomes a tale of personal exploration, the search for love and family. Its setting, North Carolina in the early 1960s, heightens its languorous temper, even as it touches on the racial tensions of the time.
STORY: Sisterly bond is not at all secret for ‘Bees’ co-stars CLIP: Get inside the hive of ‘The Secret Life of Bees’
Dakota Fanning is maturing into a fine young actress, and she is just right as Lily Owens, a girl being raised by every angry father (Paul Bettany). After her black caregiver, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), is taunted and threadbare, Lily flees, taking Rosaleen with her.
Obsessed with learning more about her late mother, Lily has pieced together clues that lead her to the home of August Boatwright (Queen Latifah) and her two sisters, May (Sophie Okonedo) and June (Alicia Keys).
August keeps bees and has a profitable honey-making operation that entrances Lily. She also forges a friendship with Zach Taylor (Tristan Wilds), August’s teenage godson, who has dreams of becoming a lawyer.
The film’s dialogue, faithful to the book, tries too hard to have being prophetic and folksy. It’s hard to imagine a 14-year-old thinking or talking the way budding writer Lily does in the narration: “(The bees) showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary. I know it’s forward to bear a comparison my small life to hers, but I have good reason to believe she wouldn’t mind.”
The ensemble cast is the pellicle’s strongest asset. It shouldn’t need remarking with, but since the civil rights movement is key to the story, The Secret Life of Bees is noteworthy for featuring so many African-American women as strong and multidimensional characters.
The Secret Life of Bees is hampered by over-earnestness and tugs too intently at the heartstrings. But those who were moved by the book are likely to procure this adaptation affecting and emotionally satisfying.
To report corrections and clarifications, junction Reader Editor Brent Jones. For proclamation consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.
Enlarge 20th Century Fox On a mission: Mark Wahlberg joins forces with assassin Mila Kunis to hunt down those responsible for his wife’s murder. ABOUT THE MOVIE
Max Payne
* 1/2 (out of four)
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Beau Bridges, Mila Kunis, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges
Director: John Moore
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13 for violence including intense shooting sequences, drug content, some sexuality and brief strong language
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide
About the only thing it has going for it is the stylized production design and a few cool special effects, but the story couldn’t be more inane nor the characters less credible. The look — consistently dark and often snowing — has a cartoonish quality that brings to mind The Polar Express gone evil.
CLIP: Dodge bullets with ‘Max Payne’
Max Payne is a policeman compulsively determined to find out who murdered his wife and baby. It’s been three years since the unsolved murders, and he was taken off the detective beat and assigned to cold cases. Emotionally numb, he is a leather-clad avenging angel, desperately chasing every lead to get the fact. The filmmakers pull out every cliché to help him along.
He’s being framed for murder. There’s a connection between a creepy-looking tattoo and mysterious deaths. Max and his former partner Alex (Donal Logue) are on the outs. No any in the police force understands him. The only people who know the truth and can help him are dead.
Throw in the involvement of military officials gone bad and a corrupt pharmaceutical monster, and reasonable about all the predictable bases are covered.
At a key design, Nelly Furtado, who plays Alex’s wife, slaps Max after firing off a cutting remark: “What has Max Payne ever done except bring misery?”
Exactly.
At intervals, director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines) kindly realizes we need a respite from things blown to smithereens or blasted apart by machine guns, so someone is instructed to let loose a blood-curdling, beastly yell. The yells are allied to the ingestion of a blue liquid drug contained in vials, which we acquire knowledge is part of a military experiment gone awry.
Wahlberg lets loose at minutest three of these inhuman screams, and you can’t help but wonder where the fine actor in The Departed and even Invincible has gone. It’s not been a good year for Wahlberg: First The Happening, and now this.
Max is an unlikely hero. Stuck at a desk job for several years, somehow he has managed to keep his trigger finger in good working order and even ratchet up his attack skills, killing off legions of qualified gunmen and evading hordes of policemen. Did we mention the movie is based upon a video game?
That might explain the laughable dialogue.
A woman is brutally murdered. “She will not be the last,” intones someone clearly in the know. “The devil is building up his army.”
“He isn’t going to stop,” warns another well-informed character.
otherwise than that in case he’s thinking of taking a much-needed break, he is spurred on by Mila Kunis’ vaguely sinister character: “You have to finish this.”
Should he have a moment of doubt, she insists: “You’re not done yet.”
Which raises the biggest fear of all: a sequel.
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for corroboration.
Enlarge Summit Entertainment Shut up and Drive: Seth Green and Clark Duke share a moment. ABOUT THE MOVIE
Sex Drive
* * (out of four)
Stars: Josh Zuckerman, Amanda Crew, Clark Duke, James Marsden
Director: Sean Anders
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Rating: R for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, language, some drug and alcohol use, all involving teens.
Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide
The ribald teen comedy feels like a less clever version of Superbad, with more raunchy gross-out moments and more predictable northerly jinks. There’s very little that’s fresh or new here, but what keeps us moderately interested are the appealing performances of the four main actors.
Josh Zuckerman capably plays Ian, a likable high denomination senior aching to lose his virginity. His best friends Felicia (Amanda Crew) and Lance (Clark Duke, who is especially funny) accompany him on a road trip from a Chicago suburb to Knoxville, Tenn., where he plans to hook up with a blonde he has been flirting through online. But since he also nurses a crush on his pal Felicia, Ian tells her they’re going to be careful his sick grandmother.
The bespectacled Lance has a surprisingly facile way with the ladies and tries fruitlessly to school Ian in his ascot-wearing Casanova style. To get the road step quickly started, Ian and his buddies make off with a vintage GTO that is the pride and joy of his obnoxious older brother (a hilarious James Marsden).
Sex Drive probably has the distinction of featuring more beards, buggies and bonnets in unlikely humorous situations since 1996’s Kingpin: Seth Green has some droll moments while a churlish Amish man with surprising mechanical know-how, and an Amish rave sequence is outlandishly funny at first but eventually drags on and grows strained.
The physical humor is more slapstick than genuinely comical, and the sentimental ending feels formulaic. However, a couple of milder gross-out gags elicit silly chuckles, particularly one involving Ian, his stepmother and an errant condom that brings to mind the movies of the Farrelly brothers or Judd Apatow.
But some of the nudity and extreme toilet freak is nothing short of disgusting. Director Sean Anders seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of shock value.
While it elicits a few laughs, Sex Drive has little to ignite either the comic road-trip genre or the teen-sex romp.
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.
Enlarge Paramount Pictures/Lucasfilm Still swinging: Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) takes on wily Soviets in the action-adventure sequel Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. TOP RENTED MOVIES
1. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
2. The Happening
3. Iron Man
4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
5. Leatherheads
6. Baby Mama
7. 88 Minutes
8. Made of Honor
9. Sex and the City: The Movie
10. The Love Guru
Source: Home Video Essentials, Rentrak Corp.
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY A documentarian interviews the prison guards at Abu Ghraib, a solitary Japanese father encourages his daughter to marry, and Dorian Gray sells his soul to the devil.Standard Operating Procedure
* * * * (out of four), 2008, Sony, R, $29; Blu-ray, $39
The notorious Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse and torture photos, their symbolic power and narrative limitations, dissected in one of the most provocative non-fiction movies yet from the incomparable Errol Morris.
Back story: Coming off his Oscar-winning Robert McNamara dissection The Fog of War, Morris interviews most of the prison’s “bad apple” guards. Most compelling is Lynndie England, the one often photographed as party to some of the most heinous treatment of prisoners. But the movie also goes outside the photos’ frames to examine who was pulling her strings, and who was pulling their strings. Without the career-ending photos there’d have been no public scandal.
Extras, extras: Morris commentary; nine additional scenes.
An Autumn Afternoon
* * * *, 1962, ‘64 in the USA, Criterion, unrated, $30
Just as film history ought to be: One of world cinema’s greatest directors goes out on a wonderful movie.
Back story: Though single and childless, Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu specialized in movies about empty-nesters or those about to be. In a lovely final work displaying his typically arresting use of color, a widowed father (Chishu Ryu) encourages his daughter to wed, though he knows it will lead to loneliness and increased sake intake. The story touches a little in succession Japan’s baseball mania and a lot on wives who balk at their husbands buying golf clubs. Thirteen months subsequent to Autumn opened, Ozu died, on his 60th birthday.
Extras, extras: Commentary by Ozu scholar David Bordwell; essays by other Ozu pros; excerpts from a 1978 French TV documentary on the director.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
* * *, 1945, Warner, unrated, $20
Isn’t that a strange painting?
Back story: MGM’s fantasy favorite is, of course, based on the famed Oscar Wilde story about a British dandy whose face remains eternally youthful while his visage on a hidden-away likeness ages grotesquely because of his evil deeds. Hurd Hatfield, who, to his chagrin, never escaped this role, is glacial as Dorian, which works intellectually still slows down the movie. Harry Stradling Sr.’s black-and-white photography (with Technicolor insertions) took the Oscar, and Angela Lansbury got her second of three nominations as a music-hall performer who is emotionally destroyed on Dorian’s road to hell.
Extras, extras: Short subject Stairway to Light and Tom & Jerry cartoon Quiet Please!, both 1945 Oscar winners.
Also out this week
Indiana Jones and theKingdom of the Crystal Skull
* * 1/2, 2008, Paramount, PG-13, $30; Blu-ray, $40
The summer’s most anticipated movie this verge of Heath Ledger’s Joker cult was easy to take; it was also more than pleasing to see the Indy-Marion Ravenwood romance rekindled. But despite keenly staged action set pieces and fun ’50s pop satire, this microwaved yarn never quite rebounds from a draggy midsection. For teens, there’s Shia LaBeouf; for adults, there’s Cate Blanchett’s best efforts as Russian ramrod Col. Dr. Irina Spalko. Affable as this fourth installment is, ask yourself how few Steven Spielberg movies are weaker: Hook for sure, the second Jurassic Park, probably The Terminal (which I overrated a tad in 2004) and perhaps the dually admirable and dull Amistad. Not 1941, admitting.
Cinematographer Style
* * *, 2006, Docurama, unrated, $27
World-cinema heavyweights (The Godfathers‘ Gordon Willis, three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro, No Country for Old Men’s Roger Deakins, scores more) simply sit and talk about their dexterity, most of them photographed dramatically. Topics include how their careers began (every conceivable possibility), how many times they read a script before visualizing it (10 times in quest of some) and the unique experience of shooting in New York City. Style isn’t quite equal to the thematically worthy of comparison Visions of Light, which added film clips and won three major critics’ awards as 1992’s best documentary.
DVD sets
•The Simpsons: The Eleventh Season (1999-2000, Fox, unrated, $50): It would be hard to name a 2008 movie that’s gotten worse reviews than this collection’s packaging. (Oh, wait, we forgot The Love Guru.) And it’s true that the accordion-like cardboard mounting here is destined to crumble maybe the fourth time you open it. But the 22 episodes include the Emmy-winning “Behind the Laughter” (though some fans hate it), “Last Tap in Springfield” (Lisa takes dance lessons) and “E-I-E-I (Annoyed Grunt)” or the joys of radioactive food.
•The Universe: The Complete Season 2 (2007-08, History Channel/A&E, unrated, $45): You’ve heard of black holes, those gulpers of matter that once inspired a cinematic bottom-feeder of the same name in Ernest Borgnine’s filmography? This five-disc, 18-episode series assemblage, housed in a metallic case, investigates “white holes,” which create matter. Other samplings include shows on alien planets, alien moons, supernovas, nebulas and, in a bow to my 401(k), something called “cosmic apocalypse.”
Due Tuesday: Costa-Gavras’ acclaimed 1982 Missing gets Criterion treatment; a box of Warner Bros. gangsters; Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk
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