CAN'T GET HERE SOON ENOUGH

TWO MALICK MOVIES?!

Excuse me, as I'm still trying to re-attach my face.

Per scooper Beaks over at www.aintitcool.com :

"Visual f/x legend Douglas Trumbull is working on THE TREE OF LIFE. In what capacity? Is he assisting Mike Fink on the dinosaur footage? I don't know just yet. But he has been seen knocking around Austin with Malick's crew, and I can confirm that he has been shooting footage of some sort fairly recently. Personally, I hope he's involved with the NASA-shot sequences that will allegedly be included in the IMAX movie. And when I say "IMAX movie", I mean a whole second movie. That's right, we'll be getting two new Malick movies in the next year or so: the first is THE TREE OF LIFE (which one source tells me is "massive"); the other will be an "IMAX-only" feature depicting the birth and death of the universe. It's important to note that these films are not narratively connected; to the best of my knowledge, they're thematically complementary pieces. Hopefully, I'll be able to elaborate on this by the end of the week (though I'd kinda like to stay a little vague on the details if only to preserve the air of mystery that's surrounding this production). But Douglas Trumbull, the visual f/x pioneer who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001 and Steven Spielberg on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, will be receiving his first feature credit since Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER directing BRAINSTORM. On a Terrence Malick film. It doesn't get any cooler than that, folks!"


The mind races when thinking about all of these possibilities...

THREE SENTENCE DVD REVIEWS

Greg Kinnear is an unsurprising stand-out in Flash of Genius (***), a well done but dry biopic about the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper only to have his creation stolen by Ford Motors. Kinnear always has a way of charming himself into the audience's good graces, and here, he's alternatively worried and neurotic, while affable and inspirational. But the film is too by-the-numbers to create any vivid, lasting impression, which is possibly due to the fact that the made-for-TV-feel arrives as a result of a rookie director at the helm (Marc Abraham, the prolific producer of Children of Men, The Family Man, and Dawn of the Dead).

Barry Levinon's amusing but inconsequential Hollywood satire What Just Happened (***) is worth watching if you're a fan of industy in-jokes, stars playing themselves (with the above pictured Bruce Willis doing just that in a hilariously self-effacing cameo), and a group of know-it-all filmmakers poking fun at the business they all obviously love so much. It's nowhere near as good as Levinson's other, infinitely superior black comedy Wag the Dog, which can probably be chalked up to the fact that Wag the Dog was written by David Mamet, while What Just Happened has been curiously re-shaped by original novelist Art Linson into a shambling screenplay. Robert DeNiro is great as the stressed out producer juggling his work and his three ex-wives, and if you are counting down the days (like me) until Entourage returns, What Just Happened should satisfyingly fill that gap.

QUICK THOUGHTS

Gomorrah is a masterpiece.

Flash of Genius was solid but a tad dry.

MALICK GOES PREHISTORIC?

I just saw this blurb over at http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/ :

"We're just starting work on a project for Terrence Malick, animating dinosaurs, the film is The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It'll be showing in IMAX -- so the dinosaurs will actually be life size -- and the shots of the creatures will be long and lingering." -- from an Empire magazine interview with VFX artist Mike Fink that some sources claim to have read but which can't be located by the mag's search engine.

Holy shit balls.

MOVIES FOR THE WEEKEND

For the third consecutive weekend, there's nothing remotely interesting hitting the multiplex. Next weekend, of course, brings the arrival of Watchmen, a film I will be seeing in IMAX format ASAP.

But for this weekend, I'll be catching up with some stuff on DVD or ON DEMAND, in particular, the critically acclaimed Mafia film Gomorrah, last year's Greg Kinnear drama Flash of Genius, and maybe something else. We'll see what happens.

It's funny. I have seen three releases from 2009 thus far. But I've only seen one of them in the theater (Coraline 3-D). The other two, Taken and Two Lovers, have been viewed at home, one via ON DEMAND (Two Lovers), and the other via a DVD screener (Taken). I know that the first few months of the movie-releasing year typically involves a lot of crap offerings, but I don't remember a year where I have seen this few new releases by this point.

I'm getting super-anxious for the summer movie season. I will be doing a full summer movie preview in the next few days.

CAN'T WAIT

Michael Mann's Public Enemies. July 1st. Oh baby.