Last week The Playlist was mostly out “sick.” We’ve returned. A bunch of stuff happened last week. Fortunately for us most of it was nominal and or uneventful. Here’s a greatest hits of what we missed that’s actually worth typing out.
After screening to solid reviews at this past Sundance, the documentary about exiled Polish filmmaker, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” was quietly rolled out in one New York theater without any press screenings or notification. Turns out this hush-hush rollout was so the film could qualify for an Oscar nomination before it runs on HBO in June. [Spoutblog].
It was supposed to be a secret, but the New York Times revealed that Tom Cruise would have a cameo in Ben Stiller’s Vietnam comedy, “Tropic Thunder.” The chances that this makes the film any better are slim to none. [New York Times] In related Cruise news, his WWII Nazi film directed by Bryan Singer, “Valkyrie,” got bumped from its prestigious 2008 Oscar-bait season release to a 2009, early January dumping-ground season. This means the film sucks and isn’t worth the expensive Oscar campaign. [Variety]
Gun toting American bigot Charlton Heston got his soul pried from his cold dead body and we didn’t stop to reminisce for one second over this old, fascist fucker. While, yeah, we loved Orson Welles’ “A Touch Of Evil,” and “El Cid,” as much as the next cinephile, but fuck him and his career. [New York Times] Glen Kenny reminds us all that only reason Welles’ directed ‘Evil’ in the first place (originally he was just a co-star) was because Heston told the producers that any film Welles directed he would work on and they scurried back and asked Orson to direct (for no extra dough of course).
After complaining about its obvious portrayal of malaise for more than four paragraphs, Glen Kenny points out that Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece, “La Notte,” has finally received a DVD release worthy of its cinematic release. The only problem? It’s a U.K., region 2 DVD only. [Premiere]
Legendary film critic Roger Ebert never did regain his ability to speak, but he did decide to launch an “overlooked” film festival which is a fantastic idea (and something we hope to do one day), but then he announced the main films – his selections included Ang Lee’s “Hulk”, Tarsem Singh’s “The Cell” and John Turturro’s “Romance & Cigarettes” – and we groaned and longed for the good ol’ Ebert days where his taste matched up with his wit and trenchant film analysis. [Paste]