What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that had one hell of an extended weekend this week. For starters, its author had a birthday. He’s old. Moving on. And then it had a “reaction” to “ice cream cake” that is too embarrassing to describe in detail. It’s also now very well acquainted with Rooney Mara’s body. All of it. But that’s another story for another time. Lets get back to doing what this column does best: things that are almost news.

We begin tonight with a first look at Lara Pulver as Irene Adler in Sherlock, the second series of which will hit BBC screens early next year. The much-anticipated second frame of the Steven Moffat produced series will build on the events of the last series, including showing us what the hell happened in the pool house! 

Linda Holmes over at NPR’s Monkey See blog writes about one of my personal favorite shows, How I Met Your Mother, and the optimism of inevitability as it relates to us finding Ted’s future baby mama. It’s going to happen at some point. Then what?

Over at HitFix, Drew McWeeny has written a well-constructed thought entitled Muppets, Avengers and Life in the Age of Fanfiction. You see, this is what happens when nerds grow up and get development deals. They bring back everything their little nerdy hearts loved back in the day.

This may seem like old news at this point, but somehow we missed the fact that Peter Weller has joined the cast of Star Trek 2, making said project even more awesome than previously expected. In other news, I was not aware that Peter Weller had directed episodes of Sons of Anarchy.

Speaking of Sons of Anarchy, did you catch that season finale? Sure, it turned an entire season of tension on its head, but it left us with great hope for an even more interesting next season. All-in-all, if Kurt Sutter and team don’t win some hardware for this season, he will really have more than just cause to start offing awards voting members.

In a new song that allows them to give thanks for things and tell us what should be said to George Lucas, comedy act Paul and Storm lay down “Thanksgiving.” You know, for the kids.

The LA Times has a great interview with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy director Tomas Alfredson, who says that his film isn’t really a spy movie, but “a story about friendship, loyalty and the personal costs for soldiers in the Cold War.” It also has some pretty wicked spy stuff in it, too.

In a year when the animated Oscar race is as wide as its ever been thanks to Pixar’s less than impressive showing with yet another sequel, it could be Industrial Light & Magic who run off with a golden guy for Rango, the western lizard story from Gore Verbinski.

In an interview with Wired, David Fincher shows us what his Dragon Tattoo redo has to do with ABBA and explains what the popularity of the Dragon Tattoo franchise says about your mom.

Sure, Drive was a great movie. One of the better films of 2011, hands down. But what of this animated tribute version of Drive by Tom & Bruno? Yeah, it’s really good, too.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us?

The Twilight Zone (Episode #118): “On Thursday We Leave for Home” (airdate 5/2/63)

The Plot: A group of settlers who landed on a desert planet thirty years ago wait for a rescue ship they believe is due any day. Their leader promises an Earth full of bounties, but when the ship actually arrives he begins to have second thoughts about letting them go.

The Goods: 113 interplanetary settlers arrived on V9-Gamma in 1991 in the hopes of creating a new home for humanity to thrive, but the dry, dusty planet with its dual suns beating down would have none of that. Instead, the group was forced to struggle to survive while they waited for a rescue ship. Now, thirty years later, a radio communication has alerted them to the imminent arrival of that very ship.

The group, now numbering over 180, has come close to losing faith in a rescue. Some have grown weary of the daily grind while others have given up on life and committed suicide, but through it all Captain William Benteen has kept them in line. Well, except for the ones who killed themselves. For three decades he’s been their leader, their confessor, their disciplinarian, their shoulder to lean on, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

But when the ship finally arrives and they’re given just a few days to get themselves organized for the trip home, Benteen finds himself at a crossroads. If they all return to earth will any of them remain under his watch? His protection? His control?

“William Benteen. Once a god, now a population of one.”

The drama and suspense of this story are played out beautifully across its running time as we are witness to the group’s depressing and mundane existence, their incredible joy at the ship’s arrival, and the spark of true thoughts lighting up each of their minds as they consider the fears and freedoms inherent in returning to Earth. Glimpses of it are present on almost everyone’s face, but it’s Whitmore’s Capt. Benteen who bears the brunt of it inside and out. His initial happiness is infectious, and it’s easy to see why and how he’s remained leader for three decades. But then his own fears begin to creep in, fears of not only losing control and the respect of his followers, but of what’s waiting for them back home.

He’s not lying to his people when he warns them about the hatred and jealousies and pains to be found on Earth, but he’s clearly playing them up a bit. You can see in his eyes that these are real memories and fears, but you can also see and feel that his biggest concern will be losing the authority, power and platform that he now holds. There’s no real bad guy in this episode, although Benteen teases the possibility of doing something horrific. Instead, there’s just an old man, terrified of a change that could very well leave him alone with no one to order around and no one to listen to his stories.

The question becomes what will he do with that fear? Will he succeed in spreading it throughout the others to the point where no one returns to Earth? Will he do something drastic that forces everyone’s hand?

This being The Twilight Zone my mind feared the worst, and I expected him to disable the ship to the point where return was impossible and his people and the ship’s crew were stuck on this burning rock for the remainder of their lives. I even entertained the very dark possibility that Benteen might kill his people, a la Jim Jones, rather than have them leave his control for an uncertain fate. (It was an impossible long shot, but the earlier suicide whose feet we see swinging in frame gave me a morbid hope.) Past episodes like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” also prepared me for the possibility that fear would turn the settlers against their would-be rescuers resulting in some murderous tragedy.

But in the end Rod Serling’s script takes a far simpler and far more devastating turn. Benteen feared loneliness as well as a loss of power, and in protest against those twin possibilities he instead ensures them as his fate. He’s now eternally alone, and there’s no one left to question his power let alone respect it.

Suspense and drama aside, it’s at times heart-wrenching to watch Benteen’s struggle, and while Serling gets credit for writing the script it’s Whitmore who brings the man’s dreams and fears to life. He’s alternately charismatic and frightening, ecstatic and frightened, and curiously the role and performance are a reminder of one he’d give thirty one years later in The Shawshank Redemption. Brooks Hatlen, his character in Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novella, is once again a man who’s grown accustomed to living in small, tight knit community where he lives by a strict set of rules and commands at least a modicum of respect. But when he’s released from prison he’s left facing a world that no longer makes sense. It’s all too much to bear, and he makes a choice that in the end is similar to the one he makes in this episode. His life ends, as he feared, alone.

Just two episodes ago I declared “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” to be the best of season four, but I’ve already been happily proven wrong. This season, for all its problems due to the doubling in length of the episodes, has been somewhat of a revelation to me. It occurs to me that until now my lifetime of Twilight Zone viewing has been via syndication on TV. Half-hour time slots filled with 23-minute entries in Rod Serling’s classic series… which means these episodes from season four have never entered the rotation. Before now I’ve never sought the show out on DVD, so this entire season is new to me, and while the first several eps were fairly unmemorable at best these last few have been just the opposite.

That said, “On Thursday We Leave for Home” has not only become my favorite ep of the season, but it’s also become a strong contender for my favorite of the entire series.

What do you think?

The Trivia: Once again, and for the seemingly hundredth time, the UFO seen in the episode is recycled footage/props from the film Forbidden Planet.

On the Next Episode: “A couple with a troubled marriage end up on a ship voyage with a group of elderly passengers.”

Catch-Up: Episodes covered by Twitch / Episodes covered by FSR

We’re running through all 156 of the original Twilight Zone episodes over the next several weeks, and we won’t be doing it alone! Our friends at Twitch will be entering the Zone as well on alternating weeks. So definitely tune in over at Twitch and feel free to also follow along on our Twitter accounts @twitchfilm and @rejectnation.

David Gordon Green is one of those rare filmmakers who has the comic power to make fairly despicable or unlikable characters oddly sympathetic, and oddly, likable . While Green believes everyone in the world is likable – and how he thinks that I have no idea – he certainly seems to love his antiheroes. Very few David Gordon Green characters one would want to hang out with in real life, but on the big screen, he makes oblivious, frustrating, and moronic fools highly watchable. Hopefully that’ll remain the case with his latest R-rated comedy, The Sitter.

Thanks to David Gordon Green being able to say a 1,000 words a minute, similarly to Danny McBride, in my 15-minute conversation we were able to cover a lot of ground. From the greatness of breakfast tacos, a topic I didn’t foresee being discussed, to Soul Surfer topping Your Highness earlier this year, Green goes in every direction possible with any mentioned topic.

Here’s what The Sitter director had to say about why one should live in Austin, going through hell with actors, dealing with ego, and when too much Sam Rockwell crying becomes self-indulgent.

I’m guessing you’re in LA?

I’m in Austin, Texas, where I live.

Oh, OK. So you haven’t made the move to LA yet?

No, I lived out there for about six months.

Most directors say you kinda have to live there.

I don’t know. I’d rather live down here because they have really good breakfast tacos in Austin, and I’m a big fan of the breakfast taco. Like daily I’ll go out and get a breakfast taco. I can walk to 40 different joints, so I get all sorts of different kinds.

So that’s the only reason to live in Austin, right?

There’s a lot of reasons, but that’s my favorite. That’s the one I sell people on. When they think, “Oh yeah, there’s a hip music thing…” There’s a million incentives to come here just in terms of culture, politics, or lifestyle. But people who are on the fence say, “Well, maybe I’ll move to Portland, or what’s another hipster city I could live in?” Then they come here and they eat a breakfast taco and they’re like, “OK, I’m here.”

I was there in Austin earlier this year and I thought it was pretty great, despite some of those hipsters there.

Yeah. No, I mean everybody’s got that. Any city you live in, it’s kinda about carving your own little niche out of it and making yourself comfortable. And this is that. I can walk anywhere. I can walk to the Alamo Drafthouse, go get a beer and watch a movie.

To start, I unfortunately haven’t seen the movie yet…

Je-sus! [Laughs] Hopefully you’ll see it. Now I get an extra ticket out of somebody, so that’s good. If this interview goes well, you might be charmed into seeing it.

Well, I’m actually seeing it for free Tuesday.

Je-sus! Well buy some concession to support the theater.

All right. It’s still kind of a lose-lose for ya.

For me it’s lose-lose. But if it’s like an AMC theater, I’ve got a history with them. I was an employee there. I worked at the Lowe’s Theater chain. So if you can go to a theater that I actually still feel I support…

Well, I’m seeing it at a Regal.

Je-sus! Nobody’s winning now!

If I really like the movie then you win a little.

Yeah. Well, then you’ll tell your friends and write nice things about it and then it will be good.

Yeah, exactly. So it’s kind of a win for you.

OK. I hope. I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed until you see it.

[Laughs] To actually start, one thing about your comedies is I feel that you’re very interested in torturing your characters as much as possible. Is that the intent or is that just a misinterpretation of it?

That’s a very philosophical way to look at it. But I really just like to torture actors. It’s more of a masochistic…you know, I like them to get crazy on me. I like the challenges of working with performers and coming up with new and inventive ways that we can spar. The idea of directing movie is great, and seeing big movies on the screen, that’s great, but I really love the production process of turning on cameras with a group of actors that you’ve assembled and challenging each other. It comes across as characters going through hell, but that’s literally because I’m putting them through hell, and I’m going through hell, and we’re on this hellishly fun roller coast.

I talked to one of your frequent collaborators, Danny McBride, earlier this year, who said one of your directions on Your Highness was, “Talk like you’re taking a shit.”

I’m like that all the time. There’s just so much more sophisticated directions to Daniel McBride.

[Laughs] Can you give me some examples?

There was a lot of that on Eastbound and Down season 3. It was incredible. We took it to new lows. And new highs. It literally, for me, is about like…directing is like puppeteering. I don’t sit at a monitor and scratch my chin and throw my beret in the garbage. I just dance beside the camera and I’m like shadowboxing and talking to people. This is in dramas, too, by the way. Speak what you will of my dramas. This is kinda just my process, is really to engage performers and play music on set, and, in the middle of takes, start shouting stuff at them and, “Say this. Try this.” You know, put a few little cues into their mouths and they can improvise in the next scenario. For example, on this last Eastbound season, in the middle of the scene I just told one of the actors to punch Danny in the face. And he did it. It sounds like chaos, but there’s really a trust. There’s a real genuine collaborative enthusiasm that gets really put into place in the rehearsal phase of any of these projects. And it tends to get violent. It tends to get violent in my low budget independent dramas, it tends to get violent in these bigger budget comedies that I’ve been doing, and everywhere between. It’s like kids playing make believe in the backyard. Ultimately, you are going to start out king of the castle on the tire swing and then you’re going to pick up a stick and somebody’s going to get hurt. We’re little kids.

That’s a good analogy. When it comes to getting violent, you once said how, when you’re making a big movie you’re dealing with a lot of greed and ego. When you are dealing with that, how do you work under those conditions?

You gotta get the cameras rolling. Once the cameras are rolling, all the greed and ego goes away. If you cast well and you’ve done your job, actors are in a place. Everybody respects a rolling camera, at least on my sets. It could be studio executives, producers, PA’s, whoever it is, anybody. I treat everybody the same on a set. But once the camera is rolling and we say “quiet on the set,” then it’s truly a spiritual place that we can let loose and nobly mess with you. Greed and ego is left at the door. Those are the things… you know, if people ask me what I hate about movies, it’s very little. What I hate about movies is putting credits together, because it inevitably cites conflict as to whose credit goes where and what size the fucking font is. And those are just lame conversations. The most amazing thing is a movie like when Jim McKay made Our Song. Did you ever see that movie?

No, I haven’t seen it.

Great movie. Anyway, it’s a beautiful movie, and Jim McKay is a real inspiring filmmaker in a lot of ways. He had a big stamp of “Film by:” everyone that made the movie, alphabetically. So he could fall in the middle and everyone that worked so hard, so the PA that busted his ass named Adam Appleson, you know, top billing. That’s putting greed and ego aside and just really admiring the collaborative process that is all to infrequent. You spend a lot of time talking to lawyers, and you’ll hear a lot of people in negotiations as to how to address their vanity the most. And that stuff is so uninteresting. I just want to roll film.

If you don’t mind giving me an example, what’s the biggest vain thing you’ve ever had to deal with, without naming names?

I couldn’t not name names because I get adrenaline going so much, and then I become a shit talker, and I’ve learned not to do that in interviews with people I don’t know very well. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Let me ask you this then. Say when you get like a bad note maybe coming from ego, how do you usually deal with it?

I don’t think I’ve gotten a bad…Like something like, “We don’t like this?”

Yeah, or “Change this”, or, “Couldn’t you make it like this?”

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do I deal with that? You know what? I’m pretty diplomatic about that. I say, “Back off. Let’s let an audience decide.” The Sitter is a good example. I get extremely self indulgent in making movies. People talking about making movies, one for them, one for me kinda thing. I can’t make movies for other people. I’m too self-indulgent. I would feel like I was just in a job I didn’t like if I had to do something like that. I had a lot of jobs I didn’t like before I got into movies. So I finally feel like I made it.

If I want to go away and rocket out my vision hell or high water, and I’m willing to have no one go see it because it needs to be exactly my precise vision, I’ve made movies on those terms. In all of those cases, no one went to go see them. So I’ve been there and I’ve made those choices. Movies like The Sitter, it’s a movie that you want people to go have a great time. You want them to bring their friends, get a bucket of popcorn and have a blast, and have a few laughs, and be quoting the movie on the way out the door and thinking about it the next day. That’s the dream when you make a movie like The Sitter. I’ll put a in a lot of crazy. We just throw crazy shit against the wall in the production of any of these things I work on. It is fun. And it does get violent. It’s just really fun. But some of the stuff I personally like the best ends up on the floor because it’s too strange and it’s off-putting to people that don’t want to be challenged by a three minute shot of Sam Rockwell crying in the arms of a female bodybuilder. And believe it or not, a lot of people don’t want to see a three-minute shot of Sam Rockwell crying in the arms of a female bodybuilder.

I happen to love it. I happen to think it’s incredible. It’s going to be on the DVD in the extended version for all the self-indulgent people that like crazy shit. But when you show it to a crowd of 600 people that are supposed to determine how to market the movie and get the studio’s trust behind the movie, and of 600 people, 549 say, “Get that shit out of there!” There’s a responsibility, at least I have, to consider that.

So people reacted like, “Why is the guy from Charlie’s Angels crying so much?”

Yeah, exactly. People get really…and I’m talking to a journalist at a site of people that are on the sophisticated end of movie-going, I’d imagine.

I think so.

But you gotta take into consideration that for a movie to be successful, it has to be appealing…For a movie that costs a lot of money, it needs to be successful. You have to at least consider the appeal of a little bit more of a broad culture. I try to use kind of my own ethical and emotional gauge of when to push the envelope and when to say, “All right, that’s just for me and my deleted scenes.” Some deleted scenes I would never even put on a DVD because they’re so fucked up and I would be murdered by groups of activists for having done them. I wouldn’t want anyone to be aware of them other than me and my crew. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Would you mind giving me an example?

I become very vulnerable in the process of rolling film. I become vulnerable and almost like threats; I just start throwing things out, ideas out there. If the actors and I are in sync, they’re doing things, and they’re doing some things because of our trust. And because we’re in sync, they’re doing some things that they may come up to me that night and say, “Where I went with you I love and it felt really good and it was a great process. I would rather you not use that in the movie.” Things like that. So I have to respect that.

You mentioned, when it comes to films like this, you have to make a movie for everyone. Earlier this year, I would definitely say Your Highness wasn’t a movie for everyone. That movie doesn’t play for a good amount of people, so do you think it’s just not for them or does the movie not work? 

That’s why we’re having a different conversation than if we were to talk before Your Highness came out, because I was editing The Sitter during the experience when Your Highness came out. Your Highness was made…I’m still 11-years-old, basically, trapped in a 35-year-old body. So Your Highness was made as my 11-year-old dream project, and it was made relentlessly with the support of a studio that was gracious enough to trust me because of the success of Pineapple Express. They trusted me and Danny and they were really supportive of whatever we wanted to do. And we said, “This is what we want to do, and we hope to God people want to go see it.” Some people did. Actually, I get stopped on the street more for that than any other movie. But I also got the most scathing reviews for it. Not for any sort of like, “You’re a sellout” kinda thing, but more for like, “How dare you? The audacity of a movie like that!” Which, you know, in its own weird way, in its own strange Vincent Gallow of kind of  way…it kinda feeds your ego. You’re kinda like, “Wow. I’m a badass.” It’s kinda like putting your collar up on your leather jacket in 1984.

That’s a good way of looking at bad reviews.

You know, you gotta have some sort of defense mechanism. Otherwise, financial and critical failure don’t look too good on your report card. So that was a movie where I did have the…I made choices to put in the theatrical release of the movie scenes that we knew the test screening audiences weren’t really receptive of. And I was really encouraged by everyone that I was working with that we could get it to work and we could get people to wrap their head around it. You know what? I think that movie will have its own life in a different time. But it wasn’t the time. More people wanted to see Soul Surfer, so let’s let ‘em go.

[Laughs] I know I gotta wrap up, but to end on, the one thing you, Jody [Hill], and Danny do a lot is making socially destructive characters very empathetic, even when they don’t really learn any lesson. Is that something you aspire to do, making unlikable antiheroes very empathetic?

I think everybody in this world is likeable. You kinda gotta unfold them a little bit. It’s been some of the fun of a movie…I’d even cite my film, Snow Angels, as a movie where we were exploring the darkness of a character but trying to find the humanity within it. Kenny Powers on Eastbound and Down is exactly the same thing. This is a man, a genuine fellow with despicable qualities, and on paper, and if you just take a glimpse and watch one episode, you can’t stand him. You don’t want to be around him. He’s the crazy uncle you wish wouldn’t come to the family reunion. But if Jody and I and the writers have done our jobs right, and if the audience is willing to stick with it, which is the reason that they make…You know, first season of Eastbound was not a success, which is one of the things that we kinda cited at least in our mourning of Your Highness, trying to think of, “Well, just because it didn’t have the time to evolve like Eastbound did,” by the third season now…second season we got really significant numbers and HBO is begging us to keep the show alive for a fourth season after we finish the third. So it’s a whole different song being sung now than when people saw the pilot.

To be able to follow Kenny Powers or Jonah Hill – his character is Noah Griffith in The Sitter and has some very off-putting characteristics, to be able to follow any of these guys, or James Franco’s character in Pineapple Express, and to be able to find the sympathy within them, the humanity within them, it’s an absolute testament to the performance of an actor and the gift of an actor to be able to say some harsh and unflattering things and still maintain that audience’s respect. Or, perhaps dismiss the audience, they close their eyes for a minute and they come back in, they take ad deep breath and they get it, and they start to see that…And some of that is in the editing room, honestly. It’s like by lingering for a few extra seconds and seeing the eyes of an aggressive character start to drop a little bit or some sort of little inflection of somebody searching for something more, realizing that everybody’s got their wounds and every asshole is an asshole for a reason. Those are really fun. Those are really depressing attributes of characters, and that’s what storytelling is about for me.

–

 The Sitter opens in theaters this Friday.

Why Watch? DJ as destiny. People as Rube Goldberg device.

Jamin Winans came out of nowhere (seemingly) to amaze with Ink, but this is the short film that got him the attention he deserved in the first place. It’s a head-noddable exploration of the rhythm of life where editing has as big a role to play as camera work.

How does everything in life work out? Apparently it’s because of a guy in a bandana lugging around twin turntables.

What does it cost? Just 8 minutes of your time.

Check out Spin for yourself:

SPIN (2005)

Trust us. You have time for more short films.

This year has brought us back to classic filmmaking from the silent film era with The Artist to the fantasy adventure Hugo, which recalled classic film moments (as The Film Stage rounded up here). The New York Times has even gotten in on the classical score action, drawing on booming horns and frenetic strings to help create horror and unease in their portraits of various actors’ impressions of classic film villains. It is an almost surprising turn in a year that awarded Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s electronic influenced score for The Social Network the Oscar for Original Score and saw electronic duos The Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx creating the scores for Hanna and Attack the Block, respectively. Film scoring seemed to be going the way of the electric guitar, swapping out full orchestrations for synthesizers, but as 2011 comes to a close, it seems classic orchestration is not on its way out just yet.

Full orchestrations of horns, drums, strings, and wind instruments filled theaters in films like The Artist and Hugo, taking us back to a time when live orchestras would play along with films. Their electronic counterparts tend to turn up the volume (who wasn’t rattled when Reznor and Karen O’s booming “Immigrant Song” in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’s teaser trailer came on screen?) while classical scores are able to gain that same power from the sheer number of instruments called upon and layered together. Both work to draw an emotional reaction out of audiences. The more classic films work to make you feel almost at ease surrounded by such warm sounding, familiar music whereas electronic scores work to do the complete opposite, driving you to the edge of your seat and hitting you with unexpected sounds and noises.

Where The Artist relied solely on music in lieu of dialogue or any other sound, Hugo utilizes its soundtrack in much the same way as the music punctuates certain moments and follows along with character’s reactions. This method of using score is usually left to animation (or the silent film era) and it was almost refreshing to see it used here in Martin Scorsese’s highly stylized world which also served as an homage to older filmmaking. Music becomes as much a part of Hugo’s world and story as it was in The Artist, filling each scene and moving right along with the action (rather than only accompanying it).

Hugo‘s composer, Howard Shore, certainly calls upon Parisian influences to reinforce the film’s location (although the close-ups of freshly baked croissants also help) and while his score is full-bodied, it still has a wonderful sense of whimsy. The story of Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is not all fun and adventure (look to The Adventures of TinTin for that) as it also features moments of great sadness which Shore does not ignore in songs such as “Hugo’s Father” and “The Message.” This is not to say that more modern films like The Social Network or Hanna do not create a layered, emotional experience, they just seem to do so more through shock and surprise, while these more classic sounding scores look to romance and court audiences into the emotion. Electronic scores can feel more like a race whereas more classic scores are like a dance – both entertaining and powerful, but in different ways.

The music for films like The Social Network and what has been released so far for Dragon Tattoo engage and thrill because they are unexpected and new, but this look back at classic filmmaking has been just as refreshing. Just like you can feel like rocking out to loud music one day, you may prefer more subdued music the next. Certainly these are different films with different styles from different filmmakers, but I found it interesting that in a time when it seemed film was becoming electrified, we also got new releases that could have been pulled off screens in the 1930s.

As filmmaking has (and will) continue to change and evolve, the music which accompanies these films will as well. It is an exciting time in film scoring that is allowing for new, unexpected and innovative artists to push styles forward and challenge audience’s expectations while not closing the door on the past and the fundamentals that got us to where we are today. I, for one, am a huge fan of electronic scores, but this resurgence of classic sounding films has reminded me that although I love where we are going, I still enjoy hearing where we have been.

Have you enjoyed this look back into a more classic era of filmmaking? Or have you preferred electronic scoring that seems to be coming to the forefront?

The soundtrack for Hugo is available through HOWE Records.

1. “The Thief”
2. “The Chase”
3. “The Clocks”
4. “Snowfall”
5. “Hugo’s Father”
6. “Ashes”
7. “The Station Inspector”
8. “Bookstore”
9. “The Movies”
10. “The Message”
11. “The Armoire”
12. “Purpose”
13. “The Plan”
14. “Trains”
15. “Papa Georges Made Movies”
16. “The Invention of Dreams”
17. “A Ghost in the Station”
18. “A Train Arrives in the Station”
19. “The Magician”
20. “Coeur Volant” (performed by Zaz)
21. “Winding It Up”

All the songs on this soundtrack composed by Howard Shore.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us?

The Twilight Zone (Episode #119): “Passage on the Lady Anne” (airdate 5/9/63)

The Plot: A woman believes a cruise is the ticket to saving her marriage, but it’s doubtful that her heart will go on.

The Goods: Eillen Ransome (Joyce Van Patten, who most recently could be seen in Grown Ups and Marley & Me) is not having the best marriage. Her husband Allen (Lee Philips) seems to be sniping at her more and more, and she’s treating him the same way. After eight years, the magic seems to be gone.

Where better to find it than the open ocean? They board a cruiser from New York to Southampton, England, and the emotional states begin ebbing and flowing with the seas themselves. It’s funny, though. All the other passengers seem to be far, far older than the Ransomes.

The supernatural twist (not a difficult one to guess), is reminiscent of an old campfire story about a girl who thinks she’s late for church and winds up sitting in her pew way too early. She looks around, seeing neighbors and friends who died years before, and she runs all the way home. She’s in a place she doesn’t belong.

The Ransomes are in a place they don’t belong, too. Their marriage is not in the state of bliss that a lifelong partnership should inhabit. They’re figuratively at sea, so they decide to take their fighting literally (and litoral-ally) to the ocean. This was the last episode that Charles Beaumont actually wrote before his illness forced him to put down his pen – and it’s a fitting send off because it might be his most mature work. It’s a story about dying from a man who surely knew he was on his way out.

As such, while Van Patten and Philips are interesting (and definitely up for the acting challenge), the real joy is watching the British supporting cast. Specifically, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Gladys Cooper (who would co-star in My Fair Lady the following year as Colonel Pickering and Mrs. Higgins respectively). They both bring a charming nuance and sadness to roles that could have just as easily been over-flowery potpourri. In a way, it is really their story, even though it’s not their journey we’re most concerned with.

To that end, the twist is so plain that it seems clear Beaumont wanted it that way. Everything hints toward the ship being a supernatural voyage toward the other side of death (which means the travel agent who booked the room for the Ransomes really biffed it). Even the title – a play on the double meaning of the word “passage.” The poetic connections ebb and flow easily throughout the writing, and the story ultimately becomes one of what’s most important to us in our lives. Sometimes that becomes brightest right near the end.

What do you think?

The Trivia: Beaumont has been noted as not being particularly romantic, but it’s more the case that his romanticism isn’t the obvious kind. Episodes like Long Distance Call, The Fugitive, and Miniature all ring with a sweetness about them that’s genuine. Perhaps his non-horror work can be summed up in a line from Cooper’s character in Lady Anne:

“Love has its own particular point of view. It sees everything larger than life. Nothing is too ornate, too fanciful, too dramatic. Love demands the theatrical, and then transfigures it. It turns the grotesque into the lovely, as a child does. With it, we can see what we wish to see in other people. Without it, we can’t see anything at all. We can search forever, and never find.”

That’s love in The Twilight Zone.

On the Next Episode: A writer thinks he can steal directly from Shakespeare (who we’ve just learned from Roland Emmerich was a fake anyway).

Catch-Up: Episodes covered by Twitch / Episodes covered by FSR

We’re running through all 156 of the original Twilight Zone episodes over the next several weeks, and we won’t be doing it alone! Our friends at Twitch will be entering the Zone as well on alternating weeks. So definitely tune in over at Twitch and feel free to also follow along on our Twitter accounts @twitchfilm and @rejectnation.

Well, this is certainly going to make my piece about the Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows (coming next week! only here at Film School Rejects!) press conference a touch more interesting. Deadline Ratcliff reports that Warner Bros. is currently “making a deal” with director Guy Ritchie and his new partner Lionel Wigram to “come aboard” their The Man From U.N.C.L.E. feature that was recently vacated by director Steven Soderbergh. That’s really just sort of vague – Deadline has really buried the lede on this one, finally getting to it – “the intention is for Ritchie to direct the film.” A ha! Elementary!

Ritchie and Wigram recently formed their own production company after making two Sherlock Holmes films together. Wigram wrote and produced the first Sherlock Holmes film, and serves as executive producer on the next installment, opening next week. Wigram has a bevy of other titles under his producer belt, including four Harry Potter films, August Rush, and the upcoming films The Seventh Son and Arthur & Lancelot. Also – the dude was the second unit director on Cool as Ice, so you know what that makes him? Cool as ice.

The film still comes complete with a script by Scott Z. Burns, but Soderbergh’s reasons for leaving – including budget struggles and trouble casting the lead – don’t just disappear with Ritchie and Wigram getting on board. Wait, what am I saying? We might as well cast Robert Downey, Jr. in this right now.

Fine, maybe you didn’t ask for it, but someone did! Incidentally, the person who wrote the film and wants to direct it! Weird, right? Commercial director (and second unit director for The Social Network) Noble Jones reportedly pitched a new take on Bret Easton Ellis‘s American Psycho (which of course already has already has its own, very fine, cinematic adaptation from Mary Harron, starring Christian Bale in one of his best roles, which hit theaters in 2000) to Lionsgate a few months ago, followed that by turning in a script within the last few weeks, and is now seeing an uptick in interest thanks to the entertainment industry’s insidery tracking reports. Thanks, assistants at WME who run these things, thanks a lot.

Now that we’ve got all the bile out of the way, who the hell is Noble Jones and just what does he want to do with Bret Easton Ellis’s classic villain, popped-collar investment banker serial killer Patrick Bateman? Well, Deadline Rochester calls Jones “a Fincher protege,” which is most certainly not a bad thing. His take on the material moves the action to present day, taking it out of the gloriously yuppie-fied ’80s world that the novel and Harron’s film both lived in (which was sort of, oh, I don’t know, essential to the meat of the story). The film is deemed as “a down and dirty new version” and will reportedly by a low budget affair. The film has not yet been greenlit, but is in “early stages of development” at Lionsgate.

Good luck fitting a Phil Collins-based monologue into this “remake.” [Variety, /Film]

Just in time for the gift-giving season, the studios have dropped a large number of big name DVDs and Blu-rays on the marketplace. Many of these are the would-be blockbusters from this past summer, including the Jon Favreau sci-fi Western Cowboys & Aliens.

It may not have been the biggest hit, but now you can check it out in the comfort of your own home, watching either the theatrical version or the extended one. So pull up a bar stool, as if you’re in your favorite saloon, and knock back a few drinks with James Bond and Indiana Jones in the old West. Though we’d suggest a cup of suds over the harder drinks, or you might not make it through the movie.

And now, to cover our butts… This game is only for people over the age of 21. Please drink responsibly, and don’t bring a six-shooter to a death ray fight.

TAKE A DRINK WHEN…

• Someone drinks
• Someone gets shot
• Someone is punched
• A person, animal or alien gets blown up

TAKE A DRINK WHEN YOU SEE…

• Gold
• A flashback
• Through an alien’s POV
• A wide shot of the mountains

TAKE A DRINK WHEN SOMEONE SAYS…

• “gold”
• “Taggert”
• “Lonergan”
• “Dolarhyde”

CHUG YOUR DRINK WHEN…

• An alien and a human make out

Click here for more Drinking Games

Talks of a sequel to Top Gun have been happening for at least over a year now. It’s clear that at some level, someone from Paramount is trying to make this happen. Details on the project have been pretty lacking, though. What would this sequel be about? Would Tom Cruise star? Would he even appear? Who would be directing? Well, MTV recently sat Cruise down and threw some of these very important questions his way, and his responses we’re actually kind of helpful. When asked about the possibility of this sequel actually coming to fruition Cruise responded, “We’re working on it.”

Past that he doesn’t seem to have too many details about what stage the process is in, however. He commented on an old rumor that Christopher McQuarrie was writing the script by saying, “I don’t think Chris [McQuarrie] is going to write it. Chris is directing One Shot right now, which I’m acting in. We’ve got to go back in January and finish it.” Everyone already knew this though, because it’s been widely reported that X-Men: First Class scribes Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz are currently working on the script for the Top Gun sequel. I suppose his input on how far along this project is should be taken with a grain of salt.

What this new interview does confirm, however, is that Cruise is the guy firmly in mind to star in this movie, and Tony Scott is definitely the guy who intends to come back to direct. Cruise went on to give some insight into he and Scott’s discussions on the project: “I said to Tony I want to make another movie with him. He and I haven’t made a film since Days of Thunder. Tony and I and Jerry, we never thought that we would do it again. Then they started to come to us with these ideas of where it is now. I thought, ‘Wow, that would be…what we could do now.’”

So not only is there a script in the works, it appears that both Cruise and Scott are interested in being on board for this one as well. Up until now I would have said that an actual, not straight-to-home-video sequel of this 80s gem wasn’t likely. But now I guess it’s looking much more like a possibility.

According to Cruise, it’s all going to come down to story. He said, “If we can find a story that we all want to do, we all want to make a film that is in the same kind of tone as the other one and shoot it in the same way as we shot Top Gun.” You know what that means…more shirtless volleyball! I’ll call Kenny Loggins.

The global recession we currently find ourselves in has many causes, but one of the more obvious ones has to do with the machinations and maneuverings of the men and women who work in the financial market. Movies like the recent Margin Call and Wall Street sequel used this environment for fast paced financial drama (with varying success), but that’s not the only genre the crisis can intrude upon.

Perhaps there’s a bit of romance and a few laughs to be found amidst the greed, depression, and suffering too.

That was apparently the hope anyway with the new French film, My Piece of the Pie, but the end results are anything but humorous or romantic. They’re not even all that dramatic. Hell, the ending isn’t even an ending.

“If I ever live with a woman again, I want you with me every day. You’ll be my woman interpreter.”

Steve (Gilles Lellouche) is a London-based financial wunderkind whose latest legal smash-n-grab involved a factory in a small coastal town in France, and he’s rewarded with a cushy promotion running a new hedge fund in Paris. He watches the TV news with near disinterest as they report on the massive layoffs at the factory and the near suicide of one of its employees. France (Karin Viard) is that near-suicide, and once she recovers she heads to Paris for training in the housekeeper field and gets a job at Steve’s new condo.

Neither of the two know about their common grounds, and thus begins an odd relationship that promises both connection and conflict. So far so good, and even if their meet up is a bit contrived far worse coincidences have graced the screen in the name of romance, comedy and drama.

The problem with the scenario here though is that neither of these people are very likeable, and that never changes. Steve is a self-involved prick who would rather spend time in front of his computer screens than with his son from a failed relationship. He’s cruel to those around him even going so far as to force himself upon a woman who he’s treated to a luxurious weekend getaway. Perhaps it’s meant to be seen as an aggressive seduction, but it looks like date rape to these eyes. That’s a long road for any character to come back from, and sexual assault aside it takes the film a full hour before he begins showing the slightest hint of humanity. Too little too late doesn’t even scratch the surface here. Lellouche, who also stars in the adrenaline filled Point Blank, does a fine enough job with the role, but the character rarely does anything to encourage affection or interest.

France isn’t mean-spirited or greedy, but she’s clearly got issues including a selfish streak evident in her suicide attempt which would have left her three daughters behind. It’s never touched on again either which presents an invisible wall between her character and the audience’s concern. More damaging though is Viard’s performance as she often feels like she’s acting in a completely different movie. She plays the comedic moments so ridiculously broad that the tones clash with the attempts at drama surrounding her “funny” Russian accent and goofy faces.

Writer/director Cédric Klapisch had a commercial and critical hit in 2002 with L’Auberge Espagnole (and has/is following it up with two sequels), but where that film made good use of the characters in a story that weaved naturally between drama and comedy this one fails to do the same.

The film’s third act attempts to raise the stakes in a way that seems at first to be expected before taking a sharp left turn in an entirely new direction. It’s nonsensical but exciting nonetheless for the boldness on display, and you can’t help but wonder how Klapisch will pull it off… until you realize he has no such plans. Viewers can fill in the blanks as to what comes next even to the point of redeeming the film, but that’s not their job. It’s the filmmaker’s.

There’s a kernel of a good and intriguing story at work here in its attempt to use the grand drama of the recession as a backdrop for a character piece with two divergent souls. Once the film commits to the coincidence of the two meeting it should have allowed itself to hit the other expected beats as well. Give viewers the blow-up, the change of heart, the redemption… give the viewer something that qualifies as real character growth. My Piece of the Pie does none of that and instead squanders an intriguing setup and two potentially interesting characters. Forget coming back for seconds, this piece of pie is barely worth the first bite.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Finally, a day that I’ve been waiting quite a while for has come. There’s word on what director Alexandre Aja’s next horror project is going to be. If you don’t know Aja, he’s the guy responsible for the incredibly gross The Hills Have Eyes remake that came out a couple of years ago as well as the ridiculously fun Piranha remake that hit last year. He’s pretty much the only director currently working in the horror genre that keeps turning my non-horror guy head, so I’m super excited to hear that he’s got something else in the works.

What’s on the docket this time? A movie called Horns that is an adapted screenplay Scott Bunin wrote from a novel by Joe Hill. Though he probably gets annoyed that people keep bringing this up, it’s pretty much unavoidable, so I’ll say it anyway: Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, so the horror is strong in this one.

Horns sounds like a story much too complex and weird to try and summarize in this little news post, so I’ll give you a taste of the setup from the book’s Amazon description to whet your appetite: “Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache…and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.”

Anything combining the words “Alexandre Aja” and “horror” was going to get me into the theater already, but add in all of this other strangeness and now I’ll be there with bells on. I just hope they find a super hot chick to play the raped and murdered girlfriend. Is that weird? [THR]

It’s one thing when we’re talking about Alfred Hitchcock having a walk-through in every single one of his films, including one that exclusively takes place on a lifeboat (he appears in a newspaper ad for that one). Sure it’s eccentric but it’s not surprising because, well, they’re his films and he can appear in them as he pleases.

What does strike me as weird is when a director shows up totally unexpected in someone else’s film. Usually there is a good reason – either they are producing the film or friends with the cast. However despite the later explanation, it’s still a bit jarring to see, say… the director of Kill Bill in an Adam Sandler comedy…

7. Quentin Tarantino in Little Nicky

This is one of those cameos that you actually have to stare directly at a few times before you realize what you are seeing. Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino shows up like four freaking times as the comically blind preacher Deacon in this demonic Adam Sandler flick. On first glance it’s a little hard to understand why he might show up in such a film until you think about its cast, which includes Patricia Arquette from True Romance, Tommy Lister from Jackie Brown, and of course scary Harvey Keitel from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. This ensemble, along with a movie already littered with insane cameos to begin with suddenly makes his stumbling, crazed cameo make some sense.

6. Steven Spielberg in Vanilla Sky

I like this cameo – it’s one of those where after you see it you are not even sure if it actually happened. Steven pops in and out in this scene as a guest of Tom Cruise’s character David’s birthday party. Not only is his appearance a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it type of moment, but it get’s even nuttier when you take a look at the cap that Steven is wearing in the shot. It’s a Pre-Crime cap, as in the fictional police force in Minority Report, which was of course the film that he and Cruise were currently undergoing pre-production for. Suddenly it all kind of comes together, especially since later, during the shooting of Minority Report, Vanilla Sky director Cameron Crowe managed to make a similar cameo to return the favor.

Check out Spielberg’s brief appearance:

5. Tim Burton in Singles

Well, while we’re on the subject of Cameron Crowe, anyone remember this grunge opus? The film follows several 20 something Seattle residents as they struggle to maintain their relationships during the height of the grunge era in the early 90s. While the film features several cameos from members of the more iconic grunge bands at the time – such as Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden – why Tim Burton felt the need to appear in this film is rather beyond me. I’m not complaining though; it’s a terrific cameo where he basically plays a brooding filmmaker – which is, of course, fitting.

It should also be noted that during this very same year Tim made an appearance in Danny DeVito’s film Hoffa as well. Can you guess what the role was?

Of course.

4. Sam Raimi in The Hudsucker Proxy

Evil Dead and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has probably the best cameos in his own films; whenever you see an off screen hand or object hitting an actor – it’s him doing it. Seriously, every opportunity he gets to personally slam an actor with something he takes it, and you have to respect that. However out of the movies he isn’t the director of, his appearance as one of the silhouetted brainstormers coming up with the Hula Hoop name in The Coen Brothers’ Hudsucker Proxy has to be the best. He’s the shorter one:

Now – I have a feeling that a lot of you might be yelling at me right now. The reason why is that I’m cheating a little. There’s a perfectly good reason why Raimi would appear in this film and it’s because he actually co-wrote it and was a second unit director on the thing. So yeah… I guess I’m cheating a lot. But I sure love that cameo.

Also if you are wondering what the hell Sam Raimi would be doing with the Coen Brothers in the first place well, go check the credits for The Evil Dead and see who served as the assistant editor. Actually don’t, I’ll just tell you that its Joel Coen, who actually got his start working with Raimi.

3. George Lucas in Beverly Hills Cop 3

Beverly Hills Cop 3 is one of those glorious films you spend an entire Sunday sparatically watching in a series of disjointed 20 minute segments as it plays over and over again on Comedy Central. It was during such a day that I found myself simultaneously dropping my vacuum and burrito and staring at the TV, wondering aloud just why the hell George Lucas decided to appear in the film.

That’s him with actress Christina Venuti – he’s credited as playing Disappointed Man at the end of the film, a role I must say he really embodied. Out of the very few cameos this man has made, this has to be my favorite. It’s just such a comically pathetic role, and it kind of makes me think that he has some kind of sense of humor hidden away.

The reason for this cameo was that director John Landis is rather known for featuring other directors, in fact along with Lucas, directors Joe Dante, Martha Coolidge, George Schaefer, John Singleton, Barbet Schroeder, Arthur Hiller, and Peter Medak also make cameos in this film.

2. Bryan Singer in Star Trek Nemesis

Everything I said about Spielberg’s cameo being quick, I take it back.

Did you catch it? That’s Usual Suspects and X-Men director Bryan Singer taking over Warf’s console as he leaves with Riker.

It’s another one of those really odd cameos that makes perfect sense the moment you think about it a little more – after all, Bryan directed both the first and second X-Men films, the first having already been made before this film – which of course also stars Patrick Stewart – and the second in pre-production. The director was also a bit of a Star Trek fan himself, so when he first met Stewart he made sure to find the time to also meet many of the producers for the Star Trek series. Through his friendships he was offered this run-on role, which despite being so brief, has actually earned his ‘character’ his very own Star Trek trading card.

1. Peter Jackson in Hot Fuzz

It’s really easy to forget that Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson has a really, really weird sense of humor. In fact, go and check out like, everything he did before the LOTR series and see for yourself. In fact, just go watch the film Meet The Feebles. I dare you.

While Jackson has made many cameos in his own films – including my personal favorite in Bad Taste, where his character vomits green in a bowl and then watches as a room full of people eat said vomit – he hasn’t appeared in any full length film besides his own. Well, except for Hot Fuzz.

You can probably guess which person he is there – but in case you are dense, that’s him, Father Christmas, stabbing Simon Pegg in the hand. Beautiful! Even weirder is that this isn’t the only cameo in this film that you can link to The Lord Of The Rings, as Cate Blanchett makes an even more memorable walk-on as Simon Pegg’s girlfriend, whose face we never see save for the eyes.

Engorge yourself with even more entertaining and educational lists here!

Filmmaker David Gordon Green continues his strange journey through ’80s cinematic iterations with The Sitter, which resurrects the babysitting comedy form most famously portrayed in the minor classic Adventures in Babysitting. And if it’s still not entirely clear why the once-respected indie auteur has devoted such energy to painstakingly mainstream work, at least The Sitter is a tolerably mediocre trifle, not an abomination on par with Your Highness, Green’s other comedy from earlier this year.

Jonah Hill, sporting his since-shed heft for the final time, stars as aimless college dropout Noah Griffith. Convoluted circumstances find him at the home of his mom’s friends the Pedullas, babysitting their three nightmare children. Eldest son Slater (Max Records) is a cauldron of anxieties, daughter Blithe (Landry Bender) is an aspiring celebutard, and the recently adopted Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) loves destroying things. When Noah’s manipulative love interest Marisa (Ari Graynor) promises sex in exchange for a cocaine delivery, he packs the kids in the minivan and a surreal road trip through Brooklyn begins.

The screenplay by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka commences at a funny, fast clip, cycling through an array of plot developments. Green keeps you engaged in the darker side of the Brooklyn journey’s earliest stages, which includes exploding toilets and a trip to a gay bathhouse/gym/drug-dealing compound. For awhile, at least, there’s genuine interest in the next weird step.

Hill, back in the manic comic mode that’s his forte after his strong dramatic work in Moneyball, establishes an amusingly frazzled interplay with his three gifted young co-stars. He’s at once hopelessly overwhelmed and fatherly toward them, stuck in impossible situations but always ready to dole out a helpful bit of advice. At the same time, each child’s single defining personality trait is sharply realized. Records makes a convincing mini-Woody Allen, Bender delivers her adult-minded dialogue with endless spitfire enthusiasm, and there’s a certain mystery to the way Hernandez lurks around the edges of the frame.

The whole shebang hums smoothly for about the movie’s first half, but it runs out of steam. The plot gets increasingly more convoluted, with less of an emphasis on genuinely creative, outlandish touches. Simultaneously, the transitions between the plot-driven set pieces and the accompanying character-driven moments grow steadily more awkward and abrupt. The overarching thinness of the entire enterprise comes into stark relief as plot details are tossed aside, the one-dimensional stereotype-centered humor takes hold, and the movie more or less avoids a climax entirely.

In the end, the premise isn’t fresh enough to sustain 81 minutes and the movie doesn’t have the wall-to-wall, propulsive energy of a great farcical enterprise. Green stops pushing buttons and settles for the mundane when the movie demands the offbeat and the dark.

Put another way, it’s never a good sign when a movie’s most notable, unique feat is wasting co-star Sam Rockwell.

The Upside: Jonah Hill and the kids are funny.

The Downside: The plot is pretty thin gruel that’s barely sustained over a slim 81 minutes.

On the Side: David Gordon Green should be admired for making the movies he wants, no matter what people think, but it’s hard not to wish he’d get back to more serious stuff. He’s certainly got the chops for it.

Like a mic. Drop the ball. Walk off the stage. Oh, I guess you have to say something witty or snarky before that, don’t you? Well how about some box office analysis? We’ve got two big hitters opening up this weekend, both of them reaching for different audiences, and both of them likely to have decent openings here. The star-studded girlie night is probably going to beat the R-rated Adventures in Babysitting remake, though. Okay, it’s not really a remake, but, I mean, come on. Just look at that trailer.

That film, by the way, is The Sitter starring Jonah Hill. He’s found moderate success in his newly acquired leading man status. A $17.5m opening for Get Him to the Greek was impressive enough in the summer of 2010 despite the film not having much of a branding behind it. The Sitter is also the new film by David Gordon Green, who had good numbers with Pineapple Express ($23.2m opening weekend), not so much with Your Highness ($9.3m opening weekend). The Sitter has a good chance of coming in somewhere between those two, a little less than what Jonah Hill pulled for Get Him to the Greek. Expect The Sitter to make somewhere between $15-16m, a good showing but not enough to topple the other new release here.

Adventures in Babysitting trailer. Yep. You guessed it:

That other new release we mentioned, the one for girlie night, is New Year’s Eve. Yes, we know it’s a bit early to be dropping that particular ball, but don’t tell Garry Marshall that. Hell, he wouldn’t hear you anyway. He and screenwriter Katherine Fugate had such a massive success with Valentine’s Day, they’ve decided to take the same approach here. Get as many stars as you possibly can, throw them into different scenarios that kiiiiiiiind of tie in with each other, and let love prevail. Always let love prevail. That recipe made Valentine’s Day a nice $56.2m its opening weekend in early 2010. Don’t look for anywhere near that same number here. Still, New Year’s Eve is going to be successful. It’s going to make loads more money than any other film in release, and this time next year we’ll be highly anticipating Marshall and Fugate’s next outing, Veteran’s Day. Veterans need love too, Craig. Between $35-40m is what we’re looking for this weekend for New Year’s Eve.

You know who IS in New Year’s Eve I’m excited to see? Til Schweiger. Don’t know that name? Here’s his best role:

A slew of films open in limited release this weekend, as well, including Young Adult (opening in 8 theaters), We Need to Talk About Kevin (opening in New York and L.A.) , and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (opening in 4 theaters). All are sure to be big Oscar hopefuls with intentions of expanding throughout the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, and all are sure to boast impressive per theater averages this weekend. Don’t, however, expect any of them to get anywhere near the top 10. That comes later after the Oscar nominations have been announced, and, if any of them don’t get a nominations, well, there’s always the DVD shelf.

Also opening in limited release are I Melt With You opening in New York and L.A., In Darkness opening in New York and L.A.,  Ladies Vs. Ricky Bahl opening in select cities, London River opening in select cities, Magic to Win opening in select cities, and W.E. opening in select cities.

Here’s how the weekend is shaping up:

1. New Year’s Eve – $36.7m NEW
2. The Sitter – $15.8m NEW
3. Breaking Dawn Part 1 – $6.4m (-61.1%)
4. Hugo – $4.7m (-37%)
5. Arthur Christmas – $4.6m (-36.9%)
6. The Muppets – $4.5m (-58.4%)
7. Happy Feet Two – $3m (-47.7%)
8. The Descendants – $3m (-36%)
9. Jack and Jill – $2.7m (-48%)
10. Immortals – $2.3m (-45.9%)

The $83.7m we’re looking at this weekend is up from last weekend. Of course, it is. There were no new releases last weekend. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and The Muppets had to carry the whole thing themselves, and they didn’t seem up to the challenge. New Year’s Eve‘s final number could easily fluctuate either way when the actuals come out on Monday. We could be looking at another Valentine’s Day, all $50m worth of it. We could also be looking at a gross mistake on Garry Marshall’s part, and the film could tank. That’s the wacky thing about the box office, you know. You never know where that ball is going to drop. Actually, I should probably shut up now. I’m talking myself out of a job here. So, $83.7m. Write it down. Stamp it. Laminate that bad boy. It’s going in the record books. Yeah, confidence.

We’ll be back on Sunday to go over the weekend numbers.

Click here for more of The Reject Report

Why Watch? A little girl’s bedtime story, told while bullets fly.

I featured another Jamin Winans film yesterday, but there’s no reason not to check out more – especially when Winans cuts to the chase in a movie’s first second.

This short features a gambler on the run who gets a phone call from his niece and has to tell her a bedtime story that seems to have some clear parallels to his own chase scene. A little comedy, a little coincidence and another magical urban fairytale from a fresh voice.

What does it cost? Just 5 minutes of your time.

Check out Uncle Jack for yourself:

UNCLE JACK (2010)

Trust us. You have time for more short films.

There are few human connections as assured and indelible as the bond between a mother and her child. At least, that’s what we’re led to believe. But what happens when that connection simply isn’t there? What happens when these two beings physically part ways after existing as one for nine months only to see their emotional tethering end as well?

We Need to Talk About Kevin explores that theme to a tragic and painful conclusion, but it does so with a beautiful emptiness. Style trumps content in an effort to examine the origin of a monstrous act, but while the film seems content letting everyone blame the mother (including the mother herself) for what eventually happens it never passes up an opportunity to show the child’s inherently evil nature. Neither of them change or grow from beginning to end, but the lack of a real narrative or character arc sure does look pretty.

Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) lives alone in a small house that constantly falls victim to vandals, and a walk down the street or to the supermarket puts her at risk for a drive-by slapping or insult just as often as not. She’s alone and branded by her fellow citizens as beneath contempt, and her “crime” is revealed through flashbacks that interrupt a sad life spent avoiding conflict and cleaning paint from her house and car.

We learn that pregnancy and childbirth turned her from a free spirit into a depressed and stifled woman. Her emotional disinterest in her son and her inability to act motherly are paired with a child who seemingly exits the womb already marked by Satan. Seriously, the scenes of him as a toddler could easily find a home in any horror film about evil children. He’s a cartoonish super-villain by the age of six and becomes the devil incarnate as a teenager (Ezra Miller). Of course her husband (John C. Reilly) is oblivious to it all as are Kevin’s teachers and counselors.

That progression of terror eventually leads to an incident at school that alters everyone’s lives forever, and through it all we’re led to believe Eva’s callousness and failure as a mother are the true culprit. After all she did slap his hand once.

Eva and Kevin are the dual cores of the film even beyond their obvious familial connection, and we’re reminded of it constantly. We see him picking fingernails from his tongue and lining them up on a table and later see her doing the same with egg shells. The color red is used as a visual reminder of the bloodshed to come, and it’s a color shared by the two in their jelly sandwiches, paint play, clothing and more. The message seems to be that he is his mother’s son, but his arrival on scene as a diminutive and manipulative little bastard all but negates the nurture side of the ‘nature vs nurture’ argument. But even with the devil spawn’s clear complicity the film continues to drive home Eva’s guilt through the contempt of past acquaintances, the perceived disdain of strangers, and Eva’s own refusal to argue the point. She’s as much a victim as anyone else in town yet no one seems to see it that way. Her passivity blankets the film just as Kevin’s evilness does with neither character breaking beyond those one dimensional restraints for more than a second or two.

Director/co-writer Lynne Ramsay adapted her film from the novel by Lionel Shriver, and while the book presumably offers a more textured and detailed look at the characters the film forgoes such things in favor of its style. There’s no doubt Ramsay has made her most attractive film here with stirring musical choices and well framed and structured shots, and she’s even managed one of the year’s more haunting shots with a slow zoom towards the billowing curtains at an open porch door. But for all her visual acumen Ramsay seems to shirk her duty to pair a compelling story and character to an idea and visuals. The film works better as a dream than as a narrative.

That arty, dreamlike style makes it difficult to judge performances especially when the characters are so one note across the board. Swinton has never been the warmest of actors and that trend continues here. She spends much of the film seemingly in shock and frightened of the world around her, and the brief glimpses into her pre-motherhood life are the only glimmers of emotion we get. Miller does a fine job of bringing out his internal Beelzebub with every glance and move of the eyes, and while Reilly’s dramatic turn probably comes off the best that’s faint praise as the role is so minor.

The film has additional problems including the disjointed editing that jumps back and forth with abandon. Ramsay is sure to link the transitions visually with scenes melding into each other through similar images and actions, but they diminish any chance at real emotional effect by not allowing enough time for the viewer to connect with what’s playing out onscreen. There’s also the climactic incident itself that is only glimpsed peripherally but still manages to come across as absolutely ludicrous in its execution.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is, in the end, a beautiful and intriguing misfire that mistakes style and color for depth and character. The topic of a mother’s severe disconnect with her child is a potentially fascinating one that should lend itself to an intense and thought provoking character study, but Ramsay’s film cheats its way through with little more than pretty pictures and vague intentions. It’s made clear that Eva is guilty of being a terrible mother, but Kevin is equally guilty of being a comically evil son, so who’s really to blame? The film doesn’t seem too sure of the answer, but it also doesn’t seem too concerned. And if the movie doesn’t care why should we?

The Upside: One or two effective scenes towards the end; darkly comic at times

The Downside: Eva never amounts to more than a passive waste; Kevin is played as a comic book super-villain from the age of two; missing some important details; fairly ridiculous school attack; time shift editing loses some emotional power instead of enhancing it

Here’s something sort of bizarre – director Garry Marshall and writer Katherine Fugate‘s latest star-crammed desecration of random, non-religious holidays is not monumentally or irremediably terrible. It is also not good, but it’s certainly better than its predecessor, the rancid Valentine’s Day (though that’s not saying much). New Year’s Eve is not so much a film as a gimmick – tons of stars! lots of plots! all kind of connected! just one day! – and such a gimmick can yield some unexpectedly positive results just as often as it can ending up being simply terrible entertainment not worthy of being called cinema. New Year’s Eve is not so much a film as a two-hour piece of wish fulfillment for the sort of people who read US Weekly on, well, a weekly basis. Unlike Valentine’s Day, its very existence is not offensive, but it’s bloated and kind of boring and really, just really, tremendously unnecessary.

New Year’s Eve very nearly gets a pass by way of something a touch like cinematic alchemy. By casting a giant cast of glittery stars, and by sticking them together (seemingly at random) into different plots, occasional magic does happen. Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers? They’ve got wonderful comedic chemistry. Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele? They’ve got palatable sexual chemistry. And, most surprising of all, Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer are just lovely together. Their storyline is perhaps the most absurd and tough to believe, but it’s easily the most enjoyable one to watch. Of course, just about every other pairing in the film is utterly ludicrous. Jon Bon Jovi and Katherine Heigl? Are you high? Josh Duhamel and (I won’t spoil who here)? Improbable and just bizarre. Sarah Jessica Parker and the very talented Abigail Breslin, made up within an inch of her life, as her daughter? Hard to buy. Zac Efron and Sarah Jessica Parker as siblings? You heard me. Robert De Niro providing some kind of grounding drama? It’s like he’s in another movie. Also, Hilary Swank gets the most screen time, and her entire storyline revolves around getting the Times Square ball to drop at midnight – well, that’s what her entire storyline revolves around until it just doesn’t, and Marshall and Fugate veer off into totally new, totally unforeseen territory (hint: Swank’s character Claire is not stressed, she’s sad, let’s all find out why!). Also, at one point, Michele will sing a John Hiatt song in a broken down elevator to a pajama-clad loser in a overly-theatrical move that will likely make half the audience turn to their companions and mutter, “what? It’s a musical now?” It’s not, but I expect the inevitable sequel (Flag Day? Arbor Day? Grandparents’ Day?) will be.

And, as if that bloated litany of stars and their respective storylines isn’t enough, a number of other performers randomly show up throughout the film – Cary Elwes, Common, James Belushi, Alyssa Milano probably spent more time cashing their paychecks than actually working on the production. Oh, and for some reason Cris “Ludacris” Bridges is lurking around as an NYPD cop who is, what, best pals with Hilary Swank? Pardon me, but huh? And, rest assured, fans of Hector Elizondo won’t be (read: will definitely be) disappointed by his mid-film appearance as the one man in New York City who knows how to fix a broken light bulb.

Having so many storylines and characters should be, by all means, exhausting, but Marshall and Fugate dumb it down so hard that even the New Year baby could put together the pieces. Whereas Valentine’s Day didn’t try to connect any of the characters in satisfying ways (I clearly remember two “loose end” storylines that finally got anchored to the rest of the film because Marshall so cleverly inserted a scene involving two characters from the respective plots driving by each other; if this is movie craft, count me out) and a film like Love, Actually pulls off such a trick divinely well, New Year’s Eve falls somewhere in the middle. Everyone is connected to at least someone, all of the plots link up somehow, and it’s all just okay and very unoriginal. Some plots will fall off for an hour or so, but they’ll eventually pop back up (hey, Sarah Jessica Parker! You went missing for like an hour! Weird!), and everything gets tied up in a big, shiny, silly bow. None of this is worth celebrating, but it’s certainly better than being in Times Square at midnight with a bunch of cold, drunk, sweaty strangers.

The Upside: A few of Marshall and Fugate’s varied storylines are somewhat fun to watch, and every now and then the mixed bag of cast members and plots lands somewhere on the side of punchy. My pull quote for New Year’s Eve? “Oddly watchable!”

The Downside: This is not a film so much as a lesson in how to squander talent and phone it (read: almost everything) in.

On the Side: A slew of outtakes shown over the credits are likely the best part of the film – due to one thing: Zac Efron dancing.

Oh, the holidays. That time of year when everyone wants to stay indoors, cuddle up on the couch, and lose themselves in the arms of another person. Hot cocoa, pot roast, and an endless supply of movies, what else could a single person want or need? Oh, how about those arms I mentioned earlier? Well, if the movies of Christmas have taught me anything in my long-winded existence, it’s that once the snow starts to fall love could be just around the corner. And thank goodness for that, because spending uninterrupted time with one’s family is always made better when you have a cute guy or gal with you.

You might be asking, “Gwen, how am I supposed to find love in just two weeks?” Well, unfortunately I can’t really help you with that specific deadline, however I do think the movies of the season can lend a bit of assistance in the right direction.

1. Not Everyone Gets a Second Chance…

So make the first impression last. Take Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) for example. Here is a man who has squandered every human connection he has ever had with his greed and incredibly sunny disposition. His life has become so dark and full of sadness that even his name has become synonymous with “unhappy.” Scrooge is an utter joy to be around, so much in fact that he is visited by three ghosts the night before Christmas to knock some sense into the man. The Ghost of Christmas Past, a jolly bearded man, shows him a memory of the frustrated fiancée he left behind. This tender moment where Ebenezer tries to explain that “maybe next year” they can finally get married is marred in a cloak of foreboding. There will be no next year, and even though Scrooge wakes the next morning from his ghostly visits a changed man, he will never have the chance to reunite with his lady love.

2. Shake Up Your Routine

Nothing says the holidays quite like “I want to see other people.” So when this happens to both American Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and English Iris (Kate Winslet) they both decide a change of scenery is the perfect solution. Finding each other on a house swapping site, they agree to exchange houses in an attempt to find themselves (and possibly some sexy men?). Iris moves to sunny California and meets Amanda’s screenwriter neighbor Arthur (Eli Wallach) who tells her (and us) all about the “meet cute,” the point in any film where the potential love interests meet for the first time. Iris’ meet cute happens with film composer Miles (Jack Black), Amanda’s coworker, who she eventually allows to share her bed and her heart. The Holiday gives brokenhearted women the hope that they too can flee to America, or England, post break-up and meet their own Prince Charming.

3. Set Your Sights

While You Were Sleeping is one of those rare Christmas movies that’s not really a Christmas movie. Yes, it takes place around the holidays, and it’s about a woman looking desperately for man to help decorate her tree, but in the end it’s much more than that. It is a story about rewarding someone with enough vision to be prepared when the right moment comes. Oprah would be so proud.

Lucy (Sandra Bullock) watches the same man catch the train day after day from her ticket-taker window. She is in love with this man, in a way many of us know from our own Facebook stalking ways. Unfortunately for her, she has never said enough words for him to fall back in love with her. Well, luck is on her side when the man falls onto the subway tracks and she rescues him from death. Life saver! Once at the hospital, Lucy finds out the comatose object of her affect is named Peter (Peter Gallagher) and that the hospital staff (with no dissuasion from Lucy) has informed his family that she is his fiancée. She set her sights, and got what she wanted–too bad now she has to keep up the rouse even though she’s quickly falling for Peter’s brother, Jack (Bill Pullman). I said set your sights, I didn’t say it was going to be easy picking between two men.

4. Determination

Speaking of setting your sights, the next thing you need to keep in mind when searching for love during the holidays is never letting anyone tell you it can’t happen. Both White Christmas and Love Actually (my personal favorite Christmas movie, thankyouverymuch) exemplify what it is like to stay determined when it comes to love. In White Christmas we have two dueling performance duets that fall in love with each other while attempting to save the Vermont hotel where they are scheduled to perform. Songs are song, snow is seen, and the combined power of the two couples keeps both the hotel afloat and the relationships sizzling. They are quite a team together, once they figure out the same determination to save the hotel could be just as well focused on wooing each other.

No searching for love during the Holidays list is complete without the love story vignettes in Love Actually. While the many sub-plots within the entire film show all the many forms of love, when it comes to a perfect example of love through determination no one does it better than young lover Sam (Thomas Sangster). He is set and determined to win the affection of his fellow classmate, enlisting guidance from his stepfather Daniel (Liam Neeson) in the art of wowing a lady. He knows she loves music (as the film eventually reveals she is a talented little singer) so Sam becomes dedicated to learning the drums in time for the school’s Christmas show. Now, I’m no singer but if a man used this same amount of heart and consideration to learn anything to wow me, you better believe I’d come back from the airport to land a highly-anticipated kiss on his lips too. Guys, you have a lot to live up to.

5. The Big Gesture

Finally we come to the moment of confessing our love, be it unrequited or mutual, so let’s return to Love Actually. The lessons this film provide can last well beyond Christmas and New Years. Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is desperately in love with his best friend’s new wife, Juliet (Keira Knightly). So much in fact that he can’t even be around her as just the sight of her face makes his heart hurt (Been there, Mark). She finds out after watching a video from her wedding Mark edited down to only feature her in soft lighting and slow motion. Ultimate sweetness (when not a bit stalkery) certainly. Well, rightfully so Mark is mortified that Juliet knows his secret and makes it a point to get over her. Before he can do that though, he comes to her house on Christmas eve with a cue card slide show spelling out all the reasons he loves her but knows it can never be. It is hands down one of the most tender, most sincere unrequited love gestures committed to screen. He makes her smile and he lets her go—even though it breaks his heart, he wants nothing more for the woman he loves than for her to be happy.

Love at the holidays doesn’t get any better than  that.

Open your heart and make some time for the rest of the entries in our 2011 Holiday Survival Guide.

“Supermaaaaaan…”

Be honest. It got a little dusty in your room reading that and thinking of The Iron Giant. You teared up a bit. It’s okay. It happens to all of us. I’m sure it even happens to writer/director Brad Bird when he goes back and watches this animated classic from 1999. Well, that’s one of the things we’re about to find out here with the commentary track for this very film.

And, with Bird’s years at Pixar and his first, live-action feature, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, what better time do go back and see precisely what he, along with some of his top-notch animation team, has to say about The Iron Giant? So strap your boosters on, don’t be a gun, and enjoy what all we learned from the commentary track for The Iron Giant.

“You stay. I go. No following.”

Tears.

The Iron Giant (1999)

Commentators: Brad Bird (writer, director), Jeffrey Lynch (story department head), Steve Markowski (designer for the Giant), Tony Fucile (head of animation)

• Right over the specially designed Warner Brothers logo, Bird mentions the film begins and ends with beeps. The beeps at the beginning are the Sputnik beeps which then fade into the beeps at the end of the film. This is representative of the tone of the film and the characters in it, as well, the idea of going from paranoia to understanding and acceptance.
• The opening shot was meant to represent and convey many different aspects important to the film’s story. The image of Sputnik represents paranoia. They had to show a storm going on somewhere on the Earth and that the Iron Giant’s star was headed straight for the storm’s eye. Then the shot had to go straight down into the storm. Bird mentions it was a very difficult shot to conceive and execute, and he was even told they wouldn’t be able to complete it due to budgetary constraints. His animation team made it work. Just like Tim Gunn always says.
• One of the big questions Bird and Lynch faced was in how much they should reveal of the Giant early on. They wanted to keep the Giant interesting and grab the audience’s attention without giving away too much too early. This seems to always be a concern for film makers creating a story that involves an other worldly creature. Some director’s just don’t even bother with subtlety.
• Bird mentions the first version of the film’s opening scene would be included on the special edition DVD. This version was much more elaborate and included many more ships at sea including a large tanker with over 100 men on board. According to Bird each one of the men even had a backstory as well as a dog named Sparky. In that initial sequence was also another shot of the Giant, a silhouette of him walking away. I haven’t delved much into the DVD’s special features to verify this. I’d do it, but I’m engrossed in this now. Plus the remote is all the way over there.
• There originally wasn’t supposed to be so much information given in the early scene in the diner. However, Bird and his crew felt they had to trim more and more unnecessary scenes and moments. This eventually made the information dump we get in this scene all the more important. Luckily, the nature of the scene made all the exposition seem more organic than it just being an information dump.
• “He’s like the most unlocal local there.” Bird commenting on the Dean character. The commentators also go on to mention Dean was a member of the Beat Generation, which was considered somewhat threatening to the small-town society laid out in the film. It was also important to have this character be the first adult who understands that the Giant is not a threat, being an outsider to a certain extent himself.
• The “Turbo Twinkie” was something Bird did when he was a kid. The animators were sort of skeptical about this when he initially brought it up to them, so a demonstration was in order. Tony Fucile took it upon himself to continue research in order to get the finished look perfect. “It was not very delicious,” says Fucile. Now I’m skeptical. I’ll be right back. Bird also mentions Eli Marienthal, who provided the voice for Hogarth Hughes, ate Twinkies while recording the dialogue. Now that’s method.
• The scene of Hogarth preparing to investigate the noises he’s heard was the first work animated on the film. Bird mentions they wanted to play around with what they could do with the lighting in this scene as well as the one following. He had a hard time selling this point to the people at WB. As Bird mentions, in a story reel, this sequence looks dull, mostly due to the black and white nature of the reels. “You can’t capture the mystery or the suspense in a storyboard drawing,” says Lynch. It wasn’t until they showed the execs the sequence in color that they were convinced to leave the sequence in the film.
• The sequence of shots where the Giant is revealed took nearly a year to complete from concept to full execution. The sequence incorporates many different elements and perspective changes, as Bird points out. It was Steve Markowski’s idea to have the Giant revealed in the background while standing in darkness and having the lights of his eyes turn towards our view.
• The idea for The Iron Giant began as a 12-page outline Bird had written. With no one else on the project yet, he had nine months before he had to begin turning in storyboards and designs to the animators to complete. He mentions that for as elaborate and detailed as the film is, it was a very quick production.
• As Bird and Markowski mention, the first time Hogarth runs into the Iron Giant is the most robotic the Giant is in the entire film. They wanted to gradually show the Giant picking up Hogarth’s mannerisms and acting more and more human as the story progressed. As mentioned later on in the scene when Hogarth confronts and talk to the Giant for the first time, the Giant learns these humanistic skills very quickly going from “pet to friend to hero” as Markowski says.
• When Michael Kamen came in to score the scene when the Giant is knocked out from the electricity, he played a somber, almost funereal piece for Bird. Bird convinced him that this scene was more akin to a kid seeing a spaceship land in his back yard than something to be sad about. I don’t know about Bird, but when spaceships land in my back yard I break out The Cure. Always The Cure. I humbly apologize to any aliens landing in the foreseeable future.
• One of the things Bird is very proud of in The Iron Giant is how real his characters feel. He mentions the audience reacting audibly when Hogarth gets hit in the face with a branch and how that’s a very difficult thing to pull from the audience when you’re dealing with animated characters. Audiences are so used to Wile Coyote falling off cliffs they’ve become accustomed to animated characters being more malleable than real people. “If you defy gravity and later on need to feel danger in the film, you have a really hard time convincing the audience how to do that,” says Bird.
• There was a debate between Bird and Markowski with how the Giant perceived Hogarth, if he was fascinated by the boy or if he was more like a pet who was loyal but could tire easily. The loyal pet idea stuck early on in the film, at least, as indicated by the Giant nearly nodding off at one point while Hogarth is talking. Markowski was not a fan of animating the Giant’s eyes literally rolling as he fell asleep at one point. Guess you lost that argument, Markowski.
• The landscape and settings in the film were created using Elastic Reality, something I hadn’t heard about until now. Hey, I’m not an animator. The trees and bushes in the woods are all still paintings that go through a software that warps and morphs them giving the perception that they are moving and lifelike.
• The two men Kent Mansley is interviewing after the train wreck are voiced by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two animators of classic Disney films and cartoons and two members of the famed Nine Old Men at Disney. They also provided their likenesses for the characters. As Bird states, they were huge influences on his career, as well as many other animators careers, I would assume.
• Much of The Iron Giant, particularly what is playing on a television at any given time, serves as Brad Bird’s tribute to classic animation and the animators of the time period the film is set. At one point, a classic Maypo commercial is playing. Bird mentions he wanted to use the opening of the old Disney show, but the company didn’t allow him to use it. “They don’t like being paid tribute to so much,” states Bird.
• Getting back to the idea of the Giant being like a big pet, this notion carries over into the scene where Hogarth is trying to hide the Giant’s hand from his mother. This sequence was also one of the only sequences in the film where the 2D (hand-drawn) and 3D (CGI) animation in the film were done by the same person, Richard Baneham. A conscious effort was put into having the hand whip its connector in the back like a dog would a tail. It’s also in this scene where Bird mentions what each scene was called during production. This sequence was called “Hand Over Foot”.
• An early scene that didn’t make the final film involved Hogarth talking about comic books with his mother. It was scrapped, because Bird and his team didn’t think it was all that important. However, the idea came up again when they were trying to think of a scene showing Hogarth and the Giant bonding in a stationary location. It was supervising animators Dean Wellins’ idea to carry the comic book conversation over to this scene. This moment also served to show the Giant remembering or getting a feeling of who he is and continue his path towards becoming a hero in the film. It’s also a foreshadowing to the “Superman” moment at the end. Tears.
• In the sequence where the Giant is carrying Hogarth in his hand at night, Bird points out a star moving to the left of the Moon in the top left corner of the frame. This is supposed to be Sputnik. They didn’t expect anyone to notice it, but they wanted to have it in there. At the time, people on Earth could actually see Sputnik orbiting the planet, one of the things that caused much paranoia in people in the United States, something Bird and his team wanted represented in the Giant.
• The scene where Hogarth is hopped up on Espresso is the only scene in the film Bird animated himself. Because the character is talking and moving about so rapidly, Bird had to actually draw at least some part of every inbetween, the frames in an animated film between the key frames. Would you like to know more?
• Eli Marienthal had a tough time making his voice shaky for the scene where he’s riding in the make-shift ride at the scrap yard. Bird had to get behind the actor and physically shake him to get it right. “I asked his permission first,” says Bird. Of course you did, Brad. Of course you did.
• The scene in the scrapyard after the deer has been shot, according to Bird, was designed to show kid logic, the idea of Hogarth explaining something to the Giant as Hogarth is trying to understand it himself. It’s another scene depicting the Giant’s reflection on himself and his place in the Universe. “It’s a beautiful scene,” says Lynch. “It’s the first time you see the Giant really actively embracing humanity.”
• The “interrogation” scene between Kent and Hogarth was, as Bird points out, a big bone of contention. It went through many different variations, one even involving Kent tying Hogarth up while he asks him about the Giant. Another idea that was scrapped was Kent Chloroforming Hogarth in order to get him to the barn. Naturally these ideas were all shot down to keep Kent from being too creepy. Granted, the kid gets Chloroformed at the end of the scene, but that’s not THAT creepy, right?
• The showdown scene between Hogarth and Kent, when they are quietly watching each other in their respective bedrooms, was called “Contest of Wills” during production. This was another scene Bird mentions was considered dull when it was being pitched and only comes into its own when you actually see the finished product. It’s also during this scene where you see a brief glimpse of a picture of Hogarth’s father. Bird points out no one misses that piece of information that was originally brought up in a moment of dialogue.
• Bird brings up the color scheme of the different sections of The Iron Giant. Up until the third act, everything is brushed with colors of Autumn, blue skies and brown leaves. Once the military shows up, the scheme goes darker and grayer. Color was intentionally pulled out of these moments in the film. It gets even colder when the Giant realizes he was designed to be a weapon and snow begins to fall.
• The animators were concerned with the Giant believably saying the word “Superman” with its inflexible, machine mouth. According to Lynch, there was actual applause during dailies when they perfected how to achieve this. I’m glad they did. My tear ducts are glad they did.
• Brad Bird’s son, Michael, provides the voice for one of the kids who spot the Giant through binoculars. Michael also did the voice of Hogarth during all the temp animation before production officially began.
• Because of the changes of tone in the last 20 minutes of the movie, Bird mentions it was the most difficult and most fun work he did on the film. He had to find a believable and clear way to depict all the humor, action, emotion, and suspense going on near the end of the film. According to Lynch, there is video of a pitch where he and the animation department were up all night working out the details of the end of the film. Bird mentions he wishes they had had it in their budget to add a few minutes in the end section to include all the ideas Lynch and his team had come up with. I’m not sure if that video is on the DVD. Again, lazy.
• Bird notes the difficulty of having to show the awesome strength of the Giant without him actually turning on the military and killing anyone. “If he actually killed guys who are just doing their job then he becomes an unsympathetic character.” Lynch mentions that when they storyboarded this section of the film they had the Giant killing people left and right.
• Steve Markowski and storyboard artist Mark Andrews came up with the designs for all the weaponry that pops out of the Giant near the end of the film. He mentions one of the challenges above and beyond coming up with the designs for the weapons was finding a way for them to come out of the Giant, as if they had always been there but not revealed until now. An early idea had the weapons just popping out of the Giant, but it didn’t work until they decided to have him literally open up his chest revealing that, as Markowski says, “at his heart he’s basically a big weapon”. Markowski also says it had to looks very ’50s and cool. The tentacles coming out of the Giant’s back were an homage to the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds.
• There was a debate on whether the Giant should just use his weaponry to destroy the missile rather than fly up to destroy it. According to Lynch, it was important for the Giant to not allow himself to become a weapon again for any reason.
• “This is the scene that always gets me, where the Superman reference pays off.” – Steve Markowski. Me too, Steve. Me too.
• Bird mentions the tonal shifts Michael Kamen had to work with in dealing with the music for The Iron Giant, how it goes from somber to bittersweet and almost cheerful in the next scene. Bird brings up the problems he had with Bambi as a child, how the scene after Bambi’s mom is shot it goes into birds singing and being happy. “I was always mad at the birds, because I was still feeling bad about the mother dying,” he says. He wanted to make sure they eased out of the sad moment rather than shift too much too quickly.
• There was some debate on whether or not to show that the Giant could return, even though, as Bird points out, it was in the original treatment. The final scene of the movie initially took place in India. Bird wanted to show that life goes on. Life finds a way. I’ve gotta do Jurassic Park one of these days.

Best in Commentary

“The Giant was animated by Andrew Brownlow and Mike Swofford.” – Brad Bird

“Storyboarded by Kevin O’Brien. A tough one.” – Jeffrey Lynch

“This creates another tough dilemma, because now that you’ve seen the destructive ability of this giant, it’s very easy to think of him as not being the Giant any more.” – Jeffrey Lynch

Final Thoughts

The Iron Giant is such a classic, it pains me to say this commentary isn’t an equal work of genius. There are great anecdotes about the voice acting, but much of the commentary falls into one of two categories. It’s either Bird talking us through specific scenes, telling us what is going on, what it works out with the information being delivered, and how it fits in with the themes of the film, or it’s name dropping.

Yes, I know those first two examples of Best in Commentary are NOT the best this commentary has to offer, but it’s certainly representative. Much of The Iron Giant commentary revolved around who animated what and the commentators throwing out names of people who worked on the film. That’s all well and good. I understand wanting to give credit to the people you worked with on a film, but the commentary here gets bogged down with “Richard Baneham animated this” or “John Bermudes animated that”. In fact, one of the last things Bird mentions on the commentary is how there were so many people he wasn’t able to name individually but that they’re listed in the end credits. Yes, in the end credits, not on the commentary track. Okay, cynicism aside, the film remains a wonderful classic, and it’s good to know great film makers like Brad Bird are moving onward and upward in the industry. I know that’s not about the commentary, but I didn’t want to end on a sour note.

Superman.

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