The Screening Room

Look into his heart (before it was broken by the Knicks): John Turturro in the great Miller's Crossing (file photo)

"The Mavericks have a great team, but I’m a Knicks sufferer," he said. "You're lucky. You have a real team here."

HBO Films is planning to turn a best selling book about Barry Bonds' alleged steroid use and the federal government's wide-ranging probe into performance enhancing drug use in sports into a movie, one of the book's authors said Thursday.

Read more here.

$1 million may have been a paltry punch line in Austin Powers, but it's a major boon for the AFI-Dallas International Film Festival. That's the amount that Dallas philanthropist Nancy Hamon recently bestowed upon the festival, which will launch its second installment March 27 of next year. The gift is the largest in the festival's brief history.

Festival artistic director and CEO Michael Cain says that “Mrs. Hamon’s support will allow us to focus on many of our objectives including year-round screenings and intensive educational programs in Dallas schools and universities.” Mrs. Hamon says the decision was easy when festival founder, chairman and director Liener Temerlin called her for help. "I wanted to do what I could to help this great film festival become one of the best in the country," she said in a statement. "Dallas deserves it."

Idris Elba: The face rings a Bell (Screen Gems)

Why This Christmas? Two words: Stringer Bell. He's the righthand man to Avon Barksdale's drug kingpin in The Wire, played by the icy cool Idris Elba. Elba is in This Christmas, and I dig him. So a ho-ho-ho I go. BTW, the next season of The Wire, which starts in January, focuses on the decline of the newspaper business. I will watch with tear-stained eyes.

A crowning achievement
Audiences were enchanted enough with Enchanted to dump $49 million into Disney’s coffers during the films’ initial Wednesday-Sunday run. The sum is good for the second-largest Thanksgiving weekend opening on record, though it never came close to threatening champion Toy Story 2’s $80 mil in 1999.

A heroic effort
Moviegoers latched onto one of the oldest of old school stories told in a very of-the-moment fashion as the motion-capture epic Beowulf cut down the competition this weekend to the tune of $27.5 million. The overall box-office picture was not as rosy, as the week’s top 12 movies grossed 29 percent less than the same weekend last year.

Check out Movie Critic Chris Vognar's holiday movie preview, then tell us your picks and pans for this year's holiday movie season.

Great night at the Texas Theatre Monday night. Robert Stone's documentary Oswald's Ghost is a terrific piece of filmmaking, as much a commentary about the 1960s as it is a look at the Kennedy assassination. But an interesting footnote to the night's events: Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, observed that the last three rows of the renovated theater -- where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on Nov. 22, 1963 -- have been removed. The third row from the back is where Oswald was sitting moments before Dallas police cornered him during a showing of the Audie Murphy movie War Is Hell. Soon after walking into the Texas Theatre without buying a ticket, Oswald sat in the third row from the back, five seats in from the aisle to his right. When police entered, he moved over two seats to his right and was sitting three seats in from the aisle when the confrontation began. At one time, the seat in which he was sitting during his arrest had stitched into its red upholstery white lettering that documented the moment. Now, of course, that seat is gone. "To be in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act,” said Mr. Mack, “they had to have enough room for folks with wheelchairs, so they had to take out the last three rows.”

The Rape of Europa, co-produced by Dallas' Robert Edsel, joined 14 other films today on the short list for the Academy Award for documentary feature. The other films making the list are (films in bold have already played in Dallas): Autism: The Musical, Body of War, For the Bible Tells Me So, Lake of Fire, Nanking, No End in Sight, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, Please Vote for Me, The Price of Sugar, A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, Sicko, Taxi to the Dark Side, War/Dance, and White Light/Black Rain. (White Light/Black Rain actually played on HBO -- if you missed it, this look at the aftermath of the atomic bomb is worth catching up on.)
Good luck to Mr. Edsel as his film moves forward in the voting process. If you haven't seen The Rape of Europa yet, it's playing at the Dallas Angelika.

Cate Blanchett: She (he?) will be There Wednesday (The Weinstein Company)

It's also a fine opportunity to gorge on other Dylan DVDs. Herewith three rentable essentials:

A pro's pro:Sidney Lumet with Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman (ThinkFilm)

It was Sidney Lumet, the director of 12 Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, Serpico, and many other films, including the new Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. No one recognized him, or at least they didn't care. And he seemed fine with that.

The same technology that brought The Polar Express to life in 2004 goes less family-friendly with this week's Beowulf. You might recognize some big-name stars (Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie) in antimated form. But catch it in IMAX 3D, which is Movie Critic Chris Vognar's viewing of choice (his A- had a lot to do with the IMAX 3D). Chris also liked Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which might have done better than B+ if it had 3D.

The kids might want to check out Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (B) starring Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman.

This weekend also brings Love in the Time of Cholera (D+), Mr. Untouchable (B), Finishing the Game (D+) and Southland Tales (D).

What will you be seeing at the mulitplex (or arthouse) this weekend?

Upward and onward
If at first you don’t succeed, try and sell more tickets. That was Bee Movie’s motto last weekend, as the animated flick became the first movie since 2005’s Wedding Crashers to claim the top spot after not opening there. It’s $25.6 million weekend raised its 10-day total to $71.8 million.

Director Francis Ford Coppola gave Time his top five films:

1. The Rain People (1969)
2. The Conversation (1974)
3. Apocalypse Now (1979)
4. Rumble Fish (1983)
5. Youth Without Youth (not yet released)

Missing? The Godfather and The Godfather II, which are widely regarded as cinematic classics.

Sacrilege? You tell me.

Looks like we've got a little media firestorm on our hands. And Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is right in the middle of it.

Cuban and business partner Todd Wagner executive produced Brain DePalma's new film Redacted, which opens in Dallas Nov. 30. The film, to be distributed by Cuban and Wagner's HDNet Movies (it has already shown in hotels and on cable and satellite VOD systems through HDNet's Ultra VOD program), is based on a real-life incident in which U.S. soldiers raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. (Here's a 2006 Washington Post story about the incident).

Are they coming after Will's cash? (Warner Bros.)

As you may have heard Hollywood writers are on strike. But you may not know about the role of "participation" deals in the whole affair. The long and short of it according to a strong piece from today's New York Times : Megastars like Tom Cruise and Will Smith now get so much dough on top of their regular salaries that the studios could actually be losing money, with or without the cash flowing in from DVD sales. As opposed to the writers, who merely aren't making much. Sounds like a lose-lose situation. And it sounds like it's not going away.

I read a story about the daughter of American Gangster subject Frank Lucas in Glamour (of all places).

After I saw the movie, the extra pieces of the story that she had to tell--and that fact that she existed at all, since she was scrubbed out of the film-- really stuck with me: The walls of their house and their washer and drier were full of money, she had a Fendi fur coat as a toddler (what is it with that family and fur?), and Frank was frying eggs and bacon when federal agents busted him. The Glamour story is here.

Nikki Blonsky, star of the 2007 movie musical Hairspray, will perform at the Meyerson on Dec. 16 with the Turtle Creek Chorale. As if that doesn't increase the cute-and-cuddly factor enough, the chorale will continue its tradition of collecting toys for charity. More info here.

Javier Bardem brings the scary in No Country for Old Men. (Miramax)

"I appreciate No Country for Old Men for the skill in the film craft. I understand No Country for Old Men for its penetrating disquisition on narrative conventions, and its heroic will in subverting them. I admire No Country for Old Men for the way it tightens its grip as it progresses, taking us deeper and deeper into a hellish world.
I just don't like it very much."

It stuck me as very high level filmmaking with good performances. But the ending left me cold (if not surprised, and not in a good way). And when I left, I just felt pretty unfulfilled. No Country has been mentioned on several Oscar watch lists for best picture, but I just can't see this being a film that many moviegoers will really like. It's more a movie to be respected than to be loved, and so it will be interesting to see how Academy voters weigh those feelings when casting their votes.

Man, we are *seriously* creeping into full-scale Oscar season. Only six films on the slate this week, but 2/3 of that crop are heavy heavy heavy. The other two? Well, I get the distinct impression that Fred Claus (D+)and P2 (F) don't even succeed at what they try to be. Not every film has to be Citizen Kane, but it should at least strive to be the best pre-season holiday comedy or psychological thriller that it can be. I don't need Fred Claus to be the next The Ref, but it could at least be as entertaining as National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

But what really breaks my heart is P2. I suppose the review could turn out to be wrong, but International Man of Movie Reviews Roger Moore hasn't led me astray yet. I expected a creepy, psychological thriller with lots of "OHMYGAH LOOKOUT!" moments. And it seems like I'll be getting a poor man's Hostel (yeah, re-read that. A poor man's Hostel.), sans gore. Or tension. Or excitement.

So I'll save my $10 for next week's Beowulf , pick up a copy of Cormac McCarthy's novel and wait to see No Country for Old Men until I finish reading.

Or I might just catch up on my Netflix queue. Underworld: Evolution, anyone? (What? Tony Curran is CUTE.)

I smell a rat come Oscar time. (Pixar)

Alvin and the Chipmunks
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
Bee Movie
Beowulf
Meet the Robinsons
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Shrek the Third
The Simpsons Movie
Surf’s Up
Tekkonkinkreet
TMNT

Only three will make the finals, but which will those be? Keeping in mind that not all of these have been released yet, my best guess is: Ratatouille, Persepolis and Beowulf. Persepolis was one of the darlings of the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and Ratatouille is vintage Pixar, the company that has owned this category. Beowulf is sort of the wild card here: it could really take advantage of the relatively new motion-capture technology, or it could just come off as weird looking Too early to tell there. If it turns out that Beowulf blows, then I suppose The Simpsons Movie could get some love.