Chicago – During Oscar week, all eyes turn to Unit Photographer Dale Robinette, who got the assignment on the Oscar nominated “Barbie.” The following on-set pictures were snapped during the production’s time in Los Angeles, which including the iconic cowpoke wardrobe of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
“Uncle Dale” Robinette first contacted me via email in 2013, to give information about some photos he took on the film “Lovelace.” Ever since then he has been a reliable email pal, sending me image after image from the movie sets that he is “blessed” (his word) to work on. He has plied his skills in Hollywood as a Unit Still Photographer since 1988, after a career as a stage and television actor in New York and Los Angeles. Starting with a TV short called “The Big Five” (1988), he has worked his way up the ladder, and has built an impressive photo resume through familiar films like “Donnie Darko,...
“Uncle Dale” Robinette first contacted me via email in 2013, to give information about some photos he took on the film “Lovelace.” Ever since then he has been a reliable email pal, sending me image after image from the movie sets that he is “blessed” (his word) to work on. He has plied his skills in Hollywood as a Unit Still Photographer since 1988, after a career as a stage and television actor in New York and Los Angeles. Starting with a TV short called “The Big Five” (1988), he has worked his way up the ladder, and has built an impressive photo resume through familiar films like “Donnie Darko,...
- 3/5/2024
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Click here to read the full article.
James J. Murakami, the admired art director, production designer and set designer who earned an Emmy for Deadwood and an Oscar nomination for Changeling, one of the dozen films he worked on for director Clint Eastwood, has died. He was 91.
Murakami died Dec. 15 at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a fall, his wife of 34 years, Ginger, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Murakami served as an assistant art director for production designer Dean Tavoularis and director Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather Part II (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), One From the Heart (1981) and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
He then partnered with production designer-art director Henry Bumstead on the Eastwood-helmed Unforgiven (1992), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) and Letters From Iwo Jima (2006).
After Bumstead’s death, Murakami handled production designer duties on Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008), Changeling (2008), Invictus (2009), Hereafter (2010), J.
James J. Murakami, the admired art director, production designer and set designer who earned an Emmy for Deadwood and an Oscar nomination for Changeling, one of the dozen films he worked on for director Clint Eastwood, has died. He was 91.
Murakami died Dec. 15 at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a fall, his wife of 34 years, Ginger, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Murakami served as an assistant art director for production designer Dean Tavoularis and director Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather Part II (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), One From the Heart (1981) and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
He then partnered with production designer-art director Henry Bumstead on the Eastwood-helmed Unforgiven (1992), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) and Letters From Iwo Jima (2006).
After Bumstead’s death, Murakami handled production designer duties on Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008), Changeling (2008), Invictus (2009), Hereafter (2010), J.
- 12/23/2022
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
George Seaton’s literal feel-good comedy is the flipside of pandemic films like Contagion: a powerful virus ‘cures’ grumpiness and bad vibes, encouraging a kind of Urban Utopia. The picture has nothing more to say than ‘have a nice day,’ yet it’s difficult to argue with any positive sentiment, especially these days. George Peppard and Mary Tyler Moore battle nobly with the material, which varies from good parody (Dom DeLuise) to awful vaudeville schtick to wafer-thin satire to terrible musical interludes. A Toucan bird from South America steals the show — his trainer Ray Berwick should have won an Oscar.
What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date August 24, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Susan Saint James, Don Stroud, Dom DeLuise, John McMartin, Charles Lane, Nathaniel Frey, George Furth, Morty Gunty, Frank Campanella, Thelma Ritter,...
What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date August 24, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Susan Saint James, Don Stroud, Dom DeLuise, John McMartin, Charles Lane, Nathaniel Frey, George Furth, Morty Gunty, Frank Campanella, Thelma Ritter,...
- 7/17/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Kurt Vonnegut’s quirky sci-fi novels didn’t always adapt well to film, but George Roy Hill’s 1972 effort is a faithful winner. The filmmaking craft used to ‘unstick’ Billy Pilgrim in time is nothing short of brilliant, highlighting the camera talent of Miroslav Ondricek and the editing skill of Dede Allen. The book even has a built-in sex angle that the film doesn’t shy away from — providing our first encounter with Valerie Perrine as a starlet kidnapped by aliens curious about human mating habits. The somber, sometimes spiritually-defeatist tone of the show represents the book well; it ought to be better known.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date December 3, 2019 / Available from Arrow Academy
Starring: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans, Valerie Perrine, Holly Near, Perry King, Kevin Conway, Friedrich von Ledebur, Sorrell Booke, Roberts Blossom, John Dehner, Stan Gottlieb, Karl-Otto Alberty, Henry Bumstead,...
Slaughterhouse-Five
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date December 3, 2019 / Available from Arrow Academy
Starring: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans, Valerie Perrine, Holly Near, Perry King, Kevin Conway, Friedrich von Ledebur, Sorrell Booke, Roberts Blossom, John Dehner, Stan Gottlieb, Karl-Otto Alberty, Henry Bumstead,...
- 12/3/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Chevy Chase celebrates his 75th birthday on October 8, 2018. Known for his smug, bemused sense of humor, the actor has become famous for a series of highly profitable comedies. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.
Born in New York in 1943, Chase turned to comedy after a series of odd jobs. After a short stint with the “National Lampoon,” he shot to stardom in 1975 as one of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players on “Saturday Night Live.” In its first season, Chase became famous both for his pratfalls and his Gerald Ford impersonation. He was also the initial host of “Weekend Update,” starting each week with the catchphrase, “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.”
After winning Emmys for writing and performing in 1976, Chase left “SNL” after one year to pursue a movie career (he was...
Born in New York in 1943, Chase turned to comedy after a series of odd jobs. After a short stint with the “National Lampoon,” he shot to stardom in 1975 as one of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players on “Saturday Night Live.” In its first season, Chase became famous both for his pratfalls and his Gerald Ford impersonation. He was also the initial host of “Weekend Update,” starting each week with the catchphrase, “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.”
After winning Emmys for writing and performing in 1976, Chase left “SNL” after one year to pursue a movie career (he was...
- 10/8/2018
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
Chicago – The photograph of the 2016 movie year is undoubtedbly the iconic shot of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, caught in mid dance, in the musical “La La Land.” The film received 14 nominations for this Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony (Feb. 26th), and the “Unit Still Photographer” who got the shot was Dale Robinette.
“Uncle Dale” Robinette first contacted me via email in 2013, to give information about some photos he took on the film “Lovelace.” Ever since then he has been a reliable email pal, sending me image after image from the movie sets that he is “blessed” (his word) to work on. He has plied his skills in Hollywood as a Unit Still Photographer since 1988, after a career as a stage and television actor in New York and Los Angeles. Starting with a TV short called “The Big Five” (1988), he has worked his way up the ladder, and has built...
“Uncle Dale” Robinette first contacted me via email in 2013, to give information about some photos he took on the film “Lovelace.” Ever since then he has been a reliable email pal, sending me image after image from the movie sets that he is “blessed” (his word) to work on. He has plied his skills in Hollywood as a Unit Still Photographer since 1988, after a career as a stage and television actor in New York and Los Angeles. Starting with a TV short called “The Big Five” (1988), he has worked his way up the ladder, and has built...
- 2/24/2017
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
In November 1962, Henry Bumstead traveled from Hollywood to Monroeville, Ala., to meet the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. He’d just been hired as set designer for Universal Studio’s big-screen adaptation of the smash best-seller about a young girl learning about racism in the deep South during the Great Depression, and Bumstead was looking for inspiration. He found it. “Harper Lee was there to meet me,” he wrote in a letter from Alabama to the film’s then-unknown producer, Alan Pakula. “She is the most charming person. She insisted I call her Nell — feel like
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- 2/20/2016
- by Benjamin Svetkey
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
'Father of the Bride': Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Top Five Father's Day Movies? From giant Gregory Peck to tyrant John Gielgud What would be the Top Five Father's Day movies ever made? Well, there have been countless films about fathers and/or featuring fathers of various sizes, shapes, and inclinations. In terms of quality, these range from the amusing – e.g., the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen; the Oscar-nominated The Grandfather – to the nauseating – e.g., the 1950 version of Father of the Bride; its atrocious sequel, Father's Little Dividend. Although I'm unable to come up with the absolute Top Five Father's Day Movies – or rather, just plain Father Movies – ever made, below are the first five (actually six, including a remake) "quality" patriarch-centered films that come to mind. Now, the fathers portrayed in these films aren't all heroic, loving, and/or saintly paternal figures. Several are...
- 6/22/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marlene Dietrich Grandson J. Michael Riva, Robert Clatworthy, and Harper Goff: Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame 2014 Production Designers Robert Clatworthy, Harper Goff, and J. Michael Riva will be posthumously inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame at the 18th Art Directors Guild Awards ceremony, to be held on February 8, 2014, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. (Photo: Production designer J. Michael Riva.) J. Michael Riva J. Michael Riva (1948-2012), grandson of Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express, A Foreign Affair), was production designer for Stuart Rosenberg / Robert Redford’s 1980 socially conscious drama Brubaker. Later on, Redford hired Riva as the art director for Ordinary People, also released in 1980. Riva’s other production design credits include the Lethal Weapon movies starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; A Few Good Men (1992), with Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore; The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), with Will Smith; Spider-Man 3 (2007), with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst,...
- 9/12/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
All great movies must be seen at least twice to understand how great they are. That is true in spades for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo. The story is smart the first time through but it’s brilliant the second time through. Just last year, Sight and Sound named Vertigo in it’s ‘Critics’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time’ list, clocking in at an astonishing number 1! That was a huge surprise (heck, it only came in #8 in our ‘Top Ten Tuesday – The Best of Alfred Hitchcock’ article published in March of 2012 – read the complete article Here) but lucky St. Louisans will have the chance to reassess (or experience for the first time) Vertigo when it plays on the big screen at the Tivoli midnights this weekend as part of their ‘Reel Late at the Tivoli’ series.
Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart reunited after the success of Rear Window to...
Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart reunited after the success of Rear Window to...
- 8/26/2013
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Last year, a bit of a cinematic dust-up occurred when Sight & Sound released their once-a-decade list of Greatest Movies Of All Time. Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" had long dominated the top tier, but 2012 saw the film drop to the second slot, to be replaced by Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" as the best movie ever. Of course, such rankings are a bit silly, but that didn't stop film fans from discussing the merits of both, but we think it's safe to say—they're both great. But if you need a little more to convince you just how much Hitchcock's film needs to be treasured, you might want to take a look below. The 30-minute documentary "Obsessed With Vertigo" has landed online and it's well worth a spin. The American Movie Classics production brings together a bunch of folks—Barbara Bel Geddes, Henry Bumstead, Robert A. Harris, Patricia Hitchcock, James C. Katz,...
- 8/16/2013
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi.
The best critics understand that auteurism is a handy critical lens rather than a commentary on how movies are made, but it inevitably encourages writing that overlooks major contributions by film’s non-directorial craftspeople.
Filmmaker Daniel Raim was nominated for an Oscar for his short documentary The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2001), an appreciation of production designer Robert Boyle, whose career spanned from The Wolf Man through Hitchcock (North by Northwest, The Birds) and gems such as The Crimson Kimono, Cape Fear, In Cold Blood and much more. Boyle lived to be 100, and taught at the American Film Institute until his death in 2010.
Raim has subsequently created Something’s Gonna Live (2010), a fascinating and moving tribute to Boyle and his long friendship with aged Hollywood veterans: production designers Henry Bumstead and Al Nozaki, storyboard artist Harold Michelson, cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Conrad Hall.
The best critics understand that auteurism is a handy critical lens rather than a commentary on how movies are made, but it inevitably encourages writing that overlooks major contributions by film’s non-directorial craftspeople.
Filmmaker Daniel Raim was nominated for an Oscar for his short documentary The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2001), an appreciation of production designer Robert Boyle, whose career spanned from The Wolf Man through Hitchcock (North by Northwest, The Birds) and gems such as The Crimson Kimono, Cape Fear, In Cold Blood and much more. Boyle lived to be 100, and taught at the American Film Institute until his death in 2010.
Raim has subsequently created Something’s Gonna Live (2010), a fascinating and moving tribute to Boyle and his long friendship with aged Hollywood veterans: production designers Henry Bumstead and Al Nozaki, storyboard artist Harold Michelson, cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Conrad Hall.
- 10/16/2012
- by Doug Cummings
- MUBI
The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2000), Daniel Raim’s short documentary about legendary production designer Robert Boyle (North by Northwest, The Birds), was nominated for an Oscar; Boyle himself received an honorary Oscar in 2008 at the age of 98. Over the course of several years, Raim continued to film Boyle in candid interviews and conversations with his production design colleagues (Henry Bumstead, Albert Nozaki, Harold Michelson) and cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Conrad Hall, and produced an equally engaging follow-up feature, Something’s Gonna Live (2010).
The film is a warm and contemplative portrait of the aging Boyle and his friends as they visit their old stomping grounds at Paramount Studios and converse about ways the industry has changed, and most importantly, the creative values they learned over the years and hope to preserve. Full of indelible clips, it’s an engrossing movie for movie lovers, and it has recently been released on...
The film is a warm and contemplative portrait of the aging Boyle and his friends as they visit their old stomping grounds at Paramount Studios and converse about ways the industry has changed, and most importantly, the creative values they learned over the years and hope to preserve. Full of indelible clips, it’s an engrossing movie for movie lovers, and it has recently been released on...
- 10/11/2012
- by Doug Cummings
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will showcase a new digital restoration of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in celebration of the film.s 50th anniversary on Wednesday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The evening will feature an introduction by talk show host Tavis Smiley and an onstage discussion with Oscar®-nominated actress Mary Badham. The digital restoration is courtesy of Universal Pictures, which is marking its centennial this year.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) became as much of a classic as its source, and the defining film of Gregory Peck.s career. Produced by Alan J. Pakula and directed by Robert Mulligan, the film features Peck as a Depression-era lawyer struggling against a prejudiced system to exonerate an African-American man falsely accused of rape.
For his iconic portrayal of Atticus Finch, Peck...
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) became as much of a classic as its source, and the defining film of Gregory Peck.s career. Produced by Alan J. Pakula and directed by Robert Mulligan, the film features Peck as a Depression-era lawyer struggling against a prejudiced system to exonerate an African-American man falsely accused of rape.
For his iconic portrayal of Atticus Finch, Peck...
- 4/2/2012
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
One of the bonuses of award season is the guild award shows that honor the greats of the past along with the present. The Art Directors Guild, for example, will give its lifetime achievement award on February 11 at the Beverly Hilton to Oscar-winning nominated production and costume designer Patricia Norris, who designed costumes for Blake Edwards' Victor, Victoria (pictured) and Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven as well as many David Lynch films, including Elephant Man. She's the second woman to win the honor; other winners include production designers Ken Adam, Robert Boyle, Henry Bumstead, Stuart Craig, Terence Marsh, Harold Michelson, Paul Sylbert and Dean Tavoularis. Norris began her career in the film industry as a stock girl in the wardrobe department at MGM ...
- 11/22/2010
- Thompson on Hollywood
Production Designer and Costume Designer Patricia Norris, a frequent David Lynch collaborator, will receive the Art Directors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Adg's 15th Annual Excellence in Production Design Awards on February 5, 2011, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Norris, only the second woman to be awarded the Adg's Lifetime Achievement Award (Jan Scott was the first in 2001), has been nominated for five Academy Awards in the Best Costume Design category: Days of Heaven (1978), The Elephant Man (1980), Victor Victoria (1982), 2010 (1984), and Sunset (1989). Previous recipients of Adg Lifetime Achievement Awards are Production Designers Ken Adam, Robert Boyle, Albert Brenner, Henry Bumstead, Roy Christopher, Stuart Craig, Bill Creber, John Mansbridge, Terence Marsh, Harold Michelson, Jan Scott, Paul Sylbert and Dean Tavoularis. The information below is the Adg's press release: Norris began her career in the film industry as a stock girl in the wardrobe department at MGM [...]...
- 11/22/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
HollywoodNews.com: Academy Award-winning Production Designer and Costume Designer Patricia Norris will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Art Directors Guild’s 15th Annual Excellence in Production Design Awards on February 5, 2011, it was announced today by Thomas A. Walsh, Adg Council President, and Awards co-producers Dawn Snyder and Tom Wilkins. The award will be presented at a black-tie industry gathering at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Norris began her career in the film industry as a stock girl in the wardrobe department at MGM Studios and worked her way up to become one of the industry’s most respected craft persons. In announcing this honor, Adg President Walsh said, “Patricia is one of only a very few American designers who have been able to successfully combine the dual practices of production and costume design for film and television.” She holds dual production and costume design credits for works...
Norris began her career in the film industry as a stock girl in the wardrobe department at MGM Studios and worked her way up to become one of the industry’s most respected craft persons. In announcing this honor, Adg President Walsh said, “Patricia is one of only a very few American designers who have been able to successfully combine the dual practices of production and costume design for film and television.” She holds dual production and costume design credits for works...
- 11/22/2010
- by Linny Lum
- Hollywoodnews.com
Clint Eastwood has suggested that he will continue to work within the film industry for as long as he is able to, despite turning 80 earlier this year. In an interview with Yahoo News, Eastwood described Henry Bumstead, his ex-production designer, as an inspiration to him as he had worked right up until his death at the age of 91. The director's new film Hereafter is based around the subject of mortality, (more)...
- 10/12/2010
- by By Tom Ayres
- Digital Spy
Clint Eastwood, who turned 80 this year, recalls how his longtime production designer Henry Bumstead once answered a question about growing old.
Bumstead, who kept working until his death four years ago at 91, replied: "Oh, to be 80 again."
"I thought, yeah, that's it," Eastwood said in an interview at the Warner Bros. office he has occupied since 1976. "When I'm 80, I'll be saying, 'Oh, to be 70 again,' or something like that."
The prolific director, who entered a career peak in his 70s with such films as Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River, said he aims to keep working as long as he's able and gives little thought to mortality, the subject of his new drama Hereafter, which follows three characters searching for answers about life after death.
Now that he is 80, how old does he feel? "Eighteen," Eastwood jokes, before dismissing the age issue with a shrug.
"I don't think too much about it.
Bumstead, who kept working until his death four years ago at 91, replied: "Oh, to be 80 again."
"I thought, yeah, that's it," Eastwood said in an interview at the Warner Bros. office he has occupied since 1976. "When I'm 80, I'll be saying, 'Oh, to be 70 again,' or something like that."
The prolific director, who entered a career peak in his 70s with such films as Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River, said he aims to keep working as long as he's able and gives little thought to mortality, the subject of his new drama Hereafter, which follows three characters searching for answers about life after death.
Now that he is 80, how old does he feel? "Eighteen," Eastwood jokes, before dismissing the age issue with a shrug.
"I don't think too much about it.
- 10/12/2010
- by Associated Press and Cineplex Staff
- Cineplex
Filmmaker and cinematographer Haskell Wexler.
Haskell Wexler Shoots From The Hip
By
Alex Simon
Two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler was adjudged one of the ten most influential cinematographers in movie history, according to an International Cinematographers Guild survey of its membership. He won his Oscars in both black & white and color, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Bound for Glory (1976). He also shot much of Days of Heaven (1978), for which credited director of photography Nestor Almendros -- who was losing his eye-sight, won a Best Cinematography Oscar. In 1993, Wexler was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award by the cinematographer's guild, the American Society of Cinematographers. He has received five Oscar nominations for his cinematography, in total, plus one Emmy Award in a career that has spanned six decades.
Born in Chicago to a wealthy family on February 6, 1922, Wexler cut his teeth shooting industrial films, TV commercials and documentaries. He...
Haskell Wexler Shoots From The Hip
By
Alex Simon
Two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler was adjudged one of the ten most influential cinematographers in movie history, according to an International Cinematographers Guild survey of its membership. He won his Oscars in both black & white and color, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Bound for Glory (1976). He also shot much of Days of Heaven (1978), for which credited director of photography Nestor Almendros -- who was losing his eye-sight, won a Best Cinematography Oscar. In 1993, Wexler was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award by the cinematographer's guild, the American Society of Cinematographers. He has received five Oscar nominations for his cinematography, in total, plus one Emmy Award in a career that has spanned six decades.
Born in Chicago to a wealthy family on February 6, 1922, Wexler cut his teeth shooting industrial films, TV commercials and documentaries. He...
- 10/6/2010
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
HollywoodNews.com: Academy Award® winning Production Designer Robert Stromberg, whose work has been most recently featured in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” and James Cameron’s “Avatar,” will receive the Hollywood Film Festival’s Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award at the Festival’s October 25 Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony, it was announced yesterday by festival founder and president Carlos de Abreu. Stromberg’s selection followed a recommendation to the festival by the Art Directors Guild Council.
Stromberg was first introduced to Cameron in 2005. They immediately formed a unique creative relationship, which eventually evolved into the creation of “Pandora” for the film “Avatar.” Stromberg along with Rick Carter became co-production designers for the film and in 2009 they won the Academy Award® for Best Achievement in Art Direction for this work. In addition, Stromberg and Carter were honored with the Art Directors Guild’s Excellence in Production Design Award and...
Stromberg was first introduced to Cameron in 2005. They immediately formed a unique creative relationship, which eventually evolved into the creation of “Pandora” for the film “Avatar.” Stromberg along with Rick Carter became co-production designers for the film and in 2009 they won the Academy Award® for Best Achievement in Art Direction for this work. In addition, Stromberg and Carter were honored with the Art Directors Guild’s Excellence in Production Design Award and...
- 9/8/2010
- by Linny Lum
- Hollywoodnews.com
Documentarian Daniel Raim has been working on this portrait of Hollywood production designers for more than a decade. The project started with “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose,” a short about his AFI instructor Robert Boyle (“North by Northwest,” “The Birds”) that was nominated for an Oscar in 2001.
In the years since, Raim revisited footage from that shoot, some of it thought lost, and added new characters: Henry Bumstead (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Sting”), Harold Michelson (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “Catch-22”) and Albert Nozaki (“The War of the Worlds,” “The Ten Commandments”), along with cinematographers Conrad Hall (“In Cold Blood,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) and Haskell Wexler (“The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Medium Cool”), who’s been the subject of his own documentary.
What emerges from their reminiscences about starting out together as draftsmen on the Paramount lot in the 1930s are relationships built not only on...
In the years since, Raim revisited footage from that shoot, some of it thought lost, and added new characters: Henry Bumstead (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Sting”), Harold Michelson (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “Catch-22”) and Albert Nozaki (“The War of the Worlds,” “The Ten Commandments”), along with cinematographers Conrad Hall (“In Cold Blood,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) and Haskell Wexler (“The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Medium Cool”), who’s been the subject of his own documentary.
What emerges from their reminiscences about starting out together as draftsmen on the Paramount lot in the 1930s are relationships built not only on...
- 9/8/2010
- Moving Pictures Magazine
"Iconic Production Designer Robert F Boyle, who collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock and Norman Jewison, and [was] the recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 2008, died Sunday," reports Andre Soares at the Alt Film Guide. "He was 100. The Hitchcock films on which Boyle worked are: as associate art director, Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943); as production designer, The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), and most notably North by Northwest (1959), which features Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint facing nasty spies atop Mount Rushmore.... In addition to Hitchcock and Jewison, Boyle worked with the likes of Richard Brooks, Michael Gordon, Alexander Hall, Penny Marshall, Budd Boetticher, Joe Dante, Sylvester Stallone, Hal Ashby, Arthur Hiller, Don Siegel and Tom Mankiewicz (who died this past Saturday)."
"Boyle is the subject of Daniel Raim's Oscar-nominated documentary The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), which refers to Hitchcock's North by Northwest," notes the Hollywood Reporter. "He also is a prominent subject...
"Boyle is the subject of Daniel Raim's Oscar-nominated documentary The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), which refers to Hitchcock's North by Northwest," notes the Hollywood Reporter. "He also is a prominent subject...
- 8/4/2010
- MUBI
Hollywoodnews.com: Iconic Production Designer Robert F. Boyle, a four-time Academy Award nominee for Art Direction for his work on “North by Northwest,” “Gaily, Gaily,” “The Shootist” and “Fiddler on the Roof ” and recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 2008 for his work on these and more than 86 other motion pictures, died yesterday of natural causes after a two-day stay at Cedars Sinai Hospital. He was 100.
In 1997 Boyle was voted a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Art Directors Guild. In 2001 he was further honored with the Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award by the Hollywood Film Festival. Recently he was given a tribute by the American Cinematheque and the Art Directors Guild with a screening at the Egyptian Theatre of two of his designed films, “The Wolf Man” (1941) and “Gaily, Gaily” (1969). In 1973 he was nominated for an Emmy for “The Red Pony.”
Among his other major motion picture credits as...
In 1997 Boyle was voted a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Art Directors Guild. In 2001 he was further honored with the Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award by the Hollywood Film Festival. Recently he was given a tribute by the American Cinematheque and the Art Directors Guild with a screening at the Egyptian Theatre of two of his designed films, “The Wolf Man” (1941) and “Gaily, Gaily” (1969). In 1973 he was nominated for an Emmy for “The Red Pony.”
Among his other major motion picture credits as...
- 8/3/2010
- by HollywoodNews.com
- Hollywoodnews.com
Robert F. Boyle, a four-time Academy Award nominee for art direction and a recipient of an honorary Oscar for his work on "North by Northwest," "Fiddler on the Roof" and nearly 90 other films, died Aug. 1 of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 100.
In 1997, Boyle was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Art Directors Guild and four years later was honored with the Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award by the Hollywood Film Festival. Recently, he was given a tribute by the American Cinematheque and the Adg with a screening at the Egyptian Theatre of two of his designed films, "The Wolf Man" (1941) and "Gaily, Gaily" (1969).
Boyle received Oscar noms his work on "Gaily, Gaily," "Fiddler (1971), "North by Northwest" (1959) and "The Shootist" (1976).
Among his other major motion picture credits are "The Birds" (1963), "Winter Kills" (1979), "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982), "Private Benjamin" (1980), "Portnoy's Complaint...
In 1997, Boyle was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Art Directors Guild and four years later was honored with the Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award by the Hollywood Film Festival. Recently, he was given a tribute by the American Cinematheque and the Adg with a screening at the Egyptian Theatre of two of his designed films, "The Wolf Man" (1941) and "Gaily, Gaily" (1969).
Boyle received Oscar noms his work on "Gaily, Gaily," "Fiddler (1971), "North by Northwest" (1959) and "The Shootist" (1976).
Among his other major motion picture credits are "The Birds" (1963), "Winter Kills" (1979), "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982), "Private Benjamin" (1980), "Portnoy's Complaint...
Cary Grant in North by Northwest Among the highlights of AFI Fest 2009 is the Nov. 2 screening of AFI Conservatory Alumnus Daniel Raim’s documentary Something’s Gonna Live, which profiles several behind-the-scenes Hollywood veterans — most of whom have already passed away — including production designers Robert Boyle (who turned 100 this past Oct. 10), Henry Bumstead (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sting), Harold Michelson (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Mommie Dearest, Dick Tracy), and Albert Nozaki (When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds, The Ten Commandments), in addition to cinematographers Conrad L. Hall (In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Road to Perdition) and Haskell Wexler (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of [...]...
- 10/26/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
"What took you so long?" asks Clint Eastwood, jesting when we tell him this interview will be printed in Back Stage, which has never spoken to him until now. He appeared on the cover in 2003 when the Screen Actors Guild honored him with a Life Achievement Award, but a SAG representative said at the time that he wasn't available to be interviewed. Eastwood looks stricken when he hears this and apologetically explains that the request never got to him. Perhaps that's because although he's one of the most respected filmmakers and actors working today, he prefers not to have a personal publicist. He is a man of seeming practicality and probable frugality. Anyone who works with him will tell you he "takes the B.S. out of filmmaking," as his longtime production designer, the late Henry Bumstead, so bluntly put it. In fact, Eastwood drove himself to our interview. The...
- 12/31/2008
- by Jamie Painter Young
- backstage.com
With a farewell tip of the hat to Robert Altman and a special commendation for Clint Eastwood, the American Film Institute completed its review of 2006 on Wednesday by highlighting what it calls the AFI's Moments of Significance.
Casting the spotlight on eight developments that had an impact on the worlds of TV and film, the list leads off with Clint Eastwood, dubbed "a national treasure," citing the fact that he completed two films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima that "not only complement one another, but they resonate together to create one of the great motion picture experiences of the new century." The AFI also hailed Eastwood's team of collaborators -- including producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz, writer Paul Haggis, cinematographer Tom Stern, editor Joel Cox, production designer Henry Bumstead and casting director Phyllis Huffman -- for providing "an epic reminder that the American viewpoint is not the only human perspective."
Letters also was included among the AFI's choices of the top 10 movies of the year, which were announced this month.
The new list concluded by eulogizing Altman, who died Nov. 20. It called him "a true maverick of American film. His body of work -- both in film and television -- reflects an exceptional diversity in genre, but always with his indelible signature. From overlapping dialogue to the epic ensemble pieces filled with actors who revered him, Altman's style continues to inspire artists and audiences alike."
The other developments cited by the AFI include:
The documentary speaks to the world. Citing Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, which examined global warming; James Longley's Iraq in Fragments, one of a number of docus that took on the war in Iraq; and Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, an epic take on Hurricane Katrina's effects on New Orleans.
Casting the spotlight on eight developments that had an impact on the worlds of TV and film, the list leads off with Clint Eastwood, dubbed "a national treasure," citing the fact that he completed two films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima that "not only complement one another, but they resonate together to create one of the great motion picture experiences of the new century." The AFI also hailed Eastwood's team of collaborators -- including producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz, writer Paul Haggis, cinematographer Tom Stern, editor Joel Cox, production designer Henry Bumstead and casting director Phyllis Huffman -- for providing "an epic reminder that the American viewpoint is not the only human perspective."
Letters also was included among the AFI's choices of the top 10 movies of the year, which were announced this month.
The new list concluded by eulogizing Altman, who died Nov. 20. It called him "a true maverick of American film. His body of work -- both in film and television -- reflects an exceptional diversity in genre, but always with his indelible signature. From overlapping dialogue to the epic ensemble pieces filled with actors who revered him, Altman's style continues to inspire artists and audiences alike."
The other developments cited by the AFI include:
The documentary speaks to the world. Citing Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, which examined global warming; James Longley's Iraq in Fragments, one of a number of docus that took on the war in Iraq; and Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, an epic take on Hurricane Katrina's effects on New Orleans.
- 12/27/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Malpaso Prods./Amblin Entertainment production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis
Based on the book by: James Bradley with Ron Powers
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Co-producer: Tim Moore
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
John Bradley: Ryan Phillippe
Rene Gagnon: Jesse Bradford
Ira Hayes: Adam Beach
Keyes Beech: John Benjamin Hickey
Bud Gerber: John Slattery
Mike Strank: Barry Pepper
Ralph Ignatowski: Jamie Bell
Hank Hansen: Paul Walker
Running time -- 132 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Malpaso Prods./Amblin Entertainment production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis
Based on the book by: James Bradley with Ron Powers
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Co-producer: Tim Moore
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
John Bradley: Ryan Phillippe
Rene Gagnon: Jesse Bradford
Ira Hayes: Adam Beach
Keyes Beech: John Benjamin Hickey
Bud Gerber: John Slattery
Mike Strank: Barry Pepper
Ralph Ignatowski: Jamie Bell
Hank Hansen: Paul Walker
Running time -- 132 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/10/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Oscar-winning set designer Henry Bumstead, who collaborated with Clint Eastwood on 13 movies, has died at the age of 91. Hollywood veteran Bumstead, who worked on over 100 films, won Academy Awards for production design on To Kill A Mockingbird and The Sting. In a career that spanned nearly 70 years, he was also an Oscar nominee for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Eastwood's Unforgiven. Bumstead was diagnosed with prostate cancer during the filming of Eastwood's 2004 Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby. The disease was reportedly the cause of his death. Eastwood told The Los Angeles Times, "(He was) one of a kind. He seamlessly bridged the gap between what I saw on the page and what I saw through the camera lens. He is a legend in his field and a cherished friend. We will all miss him terribly."...
- 5/30/2006
- WENN
Encouraged by the positive reaction to Mystic River, Clint Eastwood continues his exploration of the tragic side of human existence in Million Dollar Baby, a film that enters a murky area of the soul where a man can hide out from his God even as he seeks His mercy. On the surface, the film is a simple boxing story about a hellcat from the Ozarks and the grizzled Irish Catholic trainer who takes her on. Under Eastwood's painstakingly stripped-down direction -- his filmmaking has become the cinematic equivalent of Hemingway's spare though precise prose -- the story emerges as that rarest of birds, an uplifting tragedy.
Million Dollar Baby may appeal to a narrower range of moviegoers than the usual Eastwood film. The film lacks the propulsive energy of Mystic River, which, after all, was a crime tale, and the story rarely leaves the gym or boxing ring. While the film should achieve above-average results in urban markets, critical reaction and possible Oscar nominations may add substantially to the boxoffice.
Paul Haggis' screenplay is drawn from a story in "Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner," a collection of short stories based on the experiences of longtime cutman and fight manager Jerry Boyd, writing at age 70 under the pen name of F.X. Toole. What one must get used to is a writing style that favors stereotypes and familiar plots. It is the force of the personality Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman bring to these gym rats that causes them to emerge as convincing archetypes in a story of almost mystical heroism.
Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) is an emotionally closed, sour individual. Estranged from his only daughter -- the movie never gets to the bottom of how he earned her scorn -- he holes up in his downtown L.A. gym, surrounded by fighters and Scap (Freeman), an ex-boxer who runs the place. Frankie is not on good terms with God, either. He attends Mass nearly every day but does so mostly to argue with the exasperated priest (Brian O'Byrne).
When Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank), an emotionally scared hillbilly, asks him to train her, his answer is curt: At 31, she is too old, and he doesn't train "girlies." Nonetheless, she works out at his gym for a year, getting occasional tips from Scrap, before wearing Frankie down to where he grudgingly takes her on. The rocky road taken by fighter and trainer leads to a championship match. Here the story takes an abrupt turn into tragedy that forces the two to confront the true meaning of love and the strange way fate can deliver redemption.
The film has few characters. Jay Baruchel stands out as a mentally challenged man with delusions of becoming a boxer. Maggie's trailer-trash family threatens to overwhelm the movie with cliches. Otherwise, Million Dollar Baby is a three-character drama.
Clearly, Maggie becomes the daughter Frankie lacks, but theirs is a combative relationship in which they are never on the same page until the end. Similarly, Frankie and Scrap bicker like an old married couple, yet beneath the surface is a compelling symbiosis. Frankie was cutman on Scrap's last fight, where he lost an eye. Frankie can never forgive himself for not finding a way to stop the brutal bout, and Scrap knows how quickly Frankie would fall apart were he to ever leave.
What happened to Scrap has made Frankie overly cautious. He tells all his fighters to protect themselves, but what he really wants to protect is himself. Thus, he never puts his boxers into title fights, which drives them to managers who will. When he finally does agree to a title fight, his worst fears are confirmed.
The film is told in a voice-over narration by Scrap in which the poetry and homilies are a bit self-conscious. Director Eastwood keeps individual scenes simple and quick, like Maggie's fights. Once he gets the emotional impact he's after, he cuts and moves quickly on.
Similarly, Eastwood's music (orchestrated by Lennie Niehaus) is paired down, often to a lonesome guitar that reflects the characters' melancholy. Henry Bumstead's sets look old and worn. You can smell the stale sweat. Tom Stern's cinematography is straightforward in muted colors as the film plays nicely with light and shadows.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Lakeshore EntertainmentA Malpaso/Ruddy Morgan production
Credits:
Director-music: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Paul Haggis
Based on Rope Burns by: F.X. Toole
Producers: Albert S. Ruddy, Tom Rosenberg, Paul Haggis
Executive producers: Gary Lucchesi, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music orchestration: Lennie Niehaus
Co-producer: Bobby Moresco
Costumes: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Frankie Dunn: Clint Eastwood
Maggie Fitzgerald: Hilary Swank
Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris: Morgan Freeman
Danger Barch: Jay Baruchel
Big Willie Little: Mike Colter
Billie The Blue Bear: Lucia Rijker
Father Horvak: Brian O'Byrne
Shawrelle Berry: Anthony Mackie
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time -- 132 minutes...
Million Dollar Baby may appeal to a narrower range of moviegoers than the usual Eastwood film. The film lacks the propulsive energy of Mystic River, which, after all, was a crime tale, and the story rarely leaves the gym or boxing ring. While the film should achieve above-average results in urban markets, critical reaction and possible Oscar nominations may add substantially to the boxoffice.
Paul Haggis' screenplay is drawn from a story in "Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner," a collection of short stories based on the experiences of longtime cutman and fight manager Jerry Boyd, writing at age 70 under the pen name of F.X. Toole. What one must get used to is a writing style that favors stereotypes and familiar plots. It is the force of the personality Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman bring to these gym rats that causes them to emerge as convincing archetypes in a story of almost mystical heroism.
Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) is an emotionally closed, sour individual. Estranged from his only daughter -- the movie never gets to the bottom of how he earned her scorn -- he holes up in his downtown L.A. gym, surrounded by fighters and Scap (Freeman), an ex-boxer who runs the place. Frankie is not on good terms with God, either. He attends Mass nearly every day but does so mostly to argue with the exasperated priest (Brian O'Byrne).
When Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank), an emotionally scared hillbilly, asks him to train her, his answer is curt: At 31, she is too old, and he doesn't train "girlies." Nonetheless, she works out at his gym for a year, getting occasional tips from Scrap, before wearing Frankie down to where he grudgingly takes her on. The rocky road taken by fighter and trainer leads to a championship match. Here the story takes an abrupt turn into tragedy that forces the two to confront the true meaning of love and the strange way fate can deliver redemption.
The film has few characters. Jay Baruchel stands out as a mentally challenged man with delusions of becoming a boxer. Maggie's trailer-trash family threatens to overwhelm the movie with cliches. Otherwise, Million Dollar Baby is a three-character drama.
Clearly, Maggie becomes the daughter Frankie lacks, but theirs is a combative relationship in which they are never on the same page until the end. Similarly, Frankie and Scrap bicker like an old married couple, yet beneath the surface is a compelling symbiosis. Frankie was cutman on Scrap's last fight, where he lost an eye. Frankie can never forgive himself for not finding a way to stop the brutal bout, and Scrap knows how quickly Frankie would fall apart were he to ever leave.
What happened to Scrap has made Frankie overly cautious. He tells all his fighters to protect themselves, but what he really wants to protect is himself. Thus, he never puts his boxers into title fights, which drives them to managers who will. When he finally does agree to a title fight, his worst fears are confirmed.
The film is told in a voice-over narration by Scrap in which the poetry and homilies are a bit self-conscious. Director Eastwood keeps individual scenes simple and quick, like Maggie's fights. Once he gets the emotional impact he's after, he cuts and moves quickly on.
Similarly, Eastwood's music (orchestrated by Lennie Niehaus) is paired down, often to a lonesome guitar that reflects the characters' melancholy. Henry Bumstead's sets look old and worn. You can smell the stale sweat. Tom Stern's cinematography is straightforward in muted colors as the film plays nicely with light and shadows.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Lakeshore EntertainmentA Malpaso/Ruddy Morgan production
Credits:
Director-music: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Paul Haggis
Based on Rope Burns by: F.X. Toole
Producers: Albert S. Ruddy, Tom Rosenberg, Paul Haggis
Executive producers: Gary Lucchesi, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music orchestration: Lennie Niehaus
Co-producer: Bobby Moresco
Costumes: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Frankie Dunn: Clint Eastwood
Maggie Fitzgerald: Hilary Swank
Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris: Morgan Freeman
Danger Barch: Jay Baruchel
Big Willie Little: Mike Colter
Billie The Blue Bear: Lucia Rijker
Father Horvak: Brian O'Byrne
Shawrelle Berry: Anthony Mackie
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time -- 132 minutes...
Two biopics will face off against one period romance and two family-oriented fantasy films in the Art Directors Guild's contest for excellence in production design for a feature period or fantasy film. Among the ADG's nominees announced Thursday, the period/fantasy film category includes The Aviator (production designer: Dante Ferretti), Finding Neverland (Gemma Jackson), The Incredibles (Lou Romano), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (Rick Heinrichs) and The Phantom of the Opera (Anthony Pratt). In the contemporary film category, the nominees are: Collateral (David Wasco), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Dan Leigh), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Mark Friedberg), Million Dollar Baby (Henry Bumstead) and The Terminal (Alex McDowell).
- 1/14/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
William J. Creber, who production designed the Oscar-nominated The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, has been chosen to receive the Art Director Guild's lifetime achievement award. Creber, who also designed Planet of the Apes, Islands in the Stream and Flight of the Navigator, will be honored at the guild's ninth annual Art Directors Guild Awards ceremony Feb. 12 at the Beverly Hilton. Creber has served as production designer for such directors as Franklin Schaffner, Stanley Kramer, George Stevens, George Cukor, Ronald Neame and Robert Towne. Creber joins the ranks of previous ADG lifetime achievement winners including Roy Christopher, Ken Adam, Jan Scott, Henry Bumstead and Robert Boyle.
- 8/19/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Screened
Cannes Film Festival
In "Mystic River", a steadfast belief in determinism rules every moment. A crime seen in the opening sequence will affect, if not infect, every action and response for the rest of the movie. Clint Eastwood, a man who likes to challenge himself more than he is given credit for when he turns to directing, is clearly fascinated by this idea and explores its ramifications in a crisp, well-made, visually astute film that will provoke and divide his admirers.
"Mystic River" is arguably his most ambitious film since his multi-Oscar winner, "Unforgiven". But it lacks the power and depth of that film's dynamic script by David Webb Peoples. Whatever happens in its Competition slot at Cannes, Warner Bros. Pictures can expect at the very least a modest boxoffice success.
As a director, Eastwood has always disdained cinematic fuss and flourishes. His terse style has evolved into an elegant minimalism, where direction of actors, camera placement and editing achieves a lean, unromantic, yet empathetic view of people. Like his mentor Don Siegel, Eastwood prefers to work in movie genres in hopes of transcending their limitations rather than striking off in bold, original directions unburdened by literary antecedents or genre restrictions.
"Mystic River"'s script by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel, deals with the repercussions of child molestation, a topic of vital importance and one of boundless possibilities. Yet Lehane's novel is crime fiction, which steers the movie into an all-too-conventional mode. Eastwood and Helgeland downplay the whodunit aspect of the material -- indeed, the actual identity of the murderer does prove almost irrelevant to the movie's themes -- yet the movie still turns into a police procedural, which distracts from its rage against the crime of child abuse.
Three men are forever transformed by one such crime in a shabby yet communal neighborhood of Boston. Because as a frightened youngster, Dave (Tim Robbins) gets into a car of what turns out to be two sexual predators -- and his buddies Jimmy (Sean Penn) and Sean (Kevin Bacon) do not -- their lives go in different directions. The three are reluctantly brought together years later by a second tragedy, the killing of Jimmy's daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum). Sean, now a police detective, is assigned the case, and Dave soon becomes the prime suspect.
Dave has struggled to regain a sense of self and equilibrium after his ordeal. He has a wife, Celeste Marcia Gay Harden), and son but equates his life to that of a movie vampire -- the Undead, a person who appears in human form but is forever transformed and made unclean by the childhood tragedy.
A stint in prison has hardened Jimmy, an ex-thief with a violent temper who runs a corner grocery but still runs with neighborhood toughs. After his wife's death, he has a new wife (Laura Linney), a woman almost as strong-minded as he is.
Sean, the most thinly characterized of the trio, works the streets with his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne). His wife has left him for some unstated reason but makes daily voiceless phone calls to him.
The night of Katie's killing, Dave returns home late, covered with blood. He tells his wife he was mugged and may have killed his assailant. Celeste grows alarmed when no story about an unsolved killing appears in the newspapers. Jimmy, bent on revenge, organizes his own investigation with local roughnecks. Meanwhile, Sean and Whitey argue over whether their main suspect is Dave or Brendan (Thomas Guiry), the boy Katie secretly dated behind her dad's back.
Everything that happens in this movie, even the most casual comment or gesture, gets connected by movie's end, and most connections lead back to the fateful day Dave got into the pedophiles' car. The movie is engrossing, yet the viewer is aware of the hand of fiction. Symbolism lurks everywhere. Young Dave never gets to finish carving his name in wet sidewalk cement when he gets into the car, thus a life interrupted is forever memorialized in cement. And characters sometimes seem to betray natural instincts for the sake of the plot. Would a man's wife really go to an enraged father with the mere suspicion that her husband may be his daughter's murderer? Ultimately, the film is too neat and logical to deal with the messiness of lives made forever dysfunctional by an act of incalculable violence.
High marks go, as is usually the case in Eastwood films, to his technical team, especially Tom Stern's cool cinematography, Henry Bumstead's atmospheric sets and Joel Cox's concise editing.
MYSTIC RIVER
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment a Malpaso production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by: Dennis Lehane
Producers: Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt, Clint Eastwood
Executive producer: Bruce Berman
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Jimmy: Sean Penn
Dave: Tim Robbins
Sean: Kevin Bacon
Whitey: Laurence Fishburne
Celeste: Marcia Gay Harden
Jimmy's wife: Laura Linney
Val Savage: Kevin Chapman
Brendan: Thomas Guiry
Emily: Emmy Rossum
Running time -- 137 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Cannes Film Festival
In "Mystic River", a steadfast belief in determinism rules every moment. A crime seen in the opening sequence will affect, if not infect, every action and response for the rest of the movie. Clint Eastwood, a man who likes to challenge himself more than he is given credit for when he turns to directing, is clearly fascinated by this idea and explores its ramifications in a crisp, well-made, visually astute film that will provoke and divide his admirers.
"Mystic River" is arguably his most ambitious film since his multi-Oscar winner, "Unforgiven". But it lacks the power and depth of that film's dynamic script by David Webb Peoples. Whatever happens in its Competition slot at Cannes, Warner Bros. Pictures can expect at the very least a modest boxoffice success.
As a director, Eastwood has always disdained cinematic fuss and flourishes. His terse style has evolved into an elegant minimalism, where direction of actors, camera placement and editing achieves a lean, unromantic, yet empathetic view of people. Like his mentor Don Siegel, Eastwood prefers to work in movie genres in hopes of transcending their limitations rather than striking off in bold, original directions unburdened by literary antecedents or genre restrictions.
"Mystic River"'s script by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel, deals with the repercussions of child molestation, a topic of vital importance and one of boundless possibilities. Yet Lehane's novel is crime fiction, which steers the movie into an all-too-conventional mode. Eastwood and Helgeland downplay the whodunit aspect of the material -- indeed, the actual identity of the murderer does prove almost irrelevant to the movie's themes -- yet the movie still turns into a police procedural, which distracts from its rage against the crime of child abuse.
Three men are forever transformed by one such crime in a shabby yet communal neighborhood of Boston. Because as a frightened youngster, Dave (Tim Robbins) gets into a car of what turns out to be two sexual predators -- and his buddies Jimmy (Sean Penn) and Sean (Kevin Bacon) do not -- their lives go in different directions. The three are reluctantly brought together years later by a second tragedy, the killing of Jimmy's daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum). Sean, now a police detective, is assigned the case, and Dave soon becomes the prime suspect.
Dave has struggled to regain a sense of self and equilibrium after his ordeal. He has a wife, Celeste Marcia Gay Harden), and son but equates his life to that of a movie vampire -- the Undead, a person who appears in human form but is forever transformed and made unclean by the childhood tragedy.
A stint in prison has hardened Jimmy, an ex-thief with a violent temper who runs a corner grocery but still runs with neighborhood toughs. After his wife's death, he has a new wife (Laura Linney), a woman almost as strong-minded as he is.
Sean, the most thinly characterized of the trio, works the streets with his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne). His wife has left him for some unstated reason but makes daily voiceless phone calls to him.
The night of Katie's killing, Dave returns home late, covered with blood. He tells his wife he was mugged and may have killed his assailant. Celeste grows alarmed when no story about an unsolved killing appears in the newspapers. Jimmy, bent on revenge, organizes his own investigation with local roughnecks. Meanwhile, Sean and Whitey argue over whether their main suspect is Dave or Brendan (Thomas Guiry), the boy Katie secretly dated behind her dad's back.
Everything that happens in this movie, even the most casual comment or gesture, gets connected by movie's end, and most connections lead back to the fateful day Dave got into the pedophiles' car. The movie is engrossing, yet the viewer is aware of the hand of fiction. Symbolism lurks everywhere. Young Dave never gets to finish carving his name in wet sidewalk cement when he gets into the car, thus a life interrupted is forever memorialized in cement. And characters sometimes seem to betray natural instincts for the sake of the plot. Would a man's wife really go to an enraged father with the mere suspicion that her husband may be his daughter's murderer? Ultimately, the film is too neat and logical to deal with the messiness of lives made forever dysfunctional by an act of incalculable violence.
High marks go, as is usually the case in Eastwood films, to his technical team, especially Tom Stern's cool cinematography, Henry Bumstead's atmospheric sets and Joel Cox's concise editing.
MYSTIC RIVER
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment a Malpaso production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by: Dennis Lehane
Producers: Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt, Clint Eastwood
Executive producer: Bruce Berman
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Jimmy: Sean Penn
Dave: Tim Robbins
Sean: Kevin Bacon
Whitey: Laurence Fishburne
Celeste: Marcia Gay Harden
Jimmy's wife: Laura Linney
Val Savage: Kevin Chapman
Brendan: Thomas Guiry
Emily: Emmy Rossum
Running time -- 137 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Screened
Cannes Film Festival
In "Mystic River", a steadfast belief in determinism rules every moment. A crime seen in the opening sequence will affect, if not infect, every action and response for the rest of the movie. Clint Eastwood, a man who likes to challenge himself more than he is given credit for when he turns to directing, is clearly fascinated by this idea and explores its ramifications in a crisp, well-made, visually astute film that will provoke and divide his admirers.
"Mystic River" is arguably his most ambitious film since his multi-Oscar winner, "Unforgiven". But it lacks the power and depth of that film's dynamic script by David Webb Peoples. Whatever happens in its Competition slot at Cannes, Warner Bros. Pictures can expect at the very least a modest boxoffice success.
As a director, Eastwood has always disdained cinematic fuss and flourishes. His terse style has evolved into an elegant minimalism, where direction of actors, camera placement and editing achieves a lean, unromantic, yet empathetic view of people. Like his mentor Don Siegel, Eastwood prefers to work in movie genres in hopes of transcending their limitations rather than striking off in bold, original directions unburdened by literary antecedents or genre restrictions.
"Mystic River"'s script by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel, deals with the repercussions of child molestation, a topic of vital importance and one of boundless possibilities. Yet Lehane's novel is crime fiction, which steers the movie into an all-too-conventional mode. Eastwood and Helgeland downplay the whodunit aspect of the material -- indeed, the actual identity of the murderer does prove almost irrelevant to the movie's themes -- yet the movie still turns into a police procedural, which distracts from its rage against the crime of child abuse.
Three men are forever transformed by one such crime in a shabby yet communal neighborhood of Boston. Because as a frightened youngster, Dave (Tim Robbins) gets into a car of what turns out to be two sexual predators -- and his buddies Jimmy (Sean Penn) and Sean (Kevin Bacon) do not -- their lives go in different directions. The three are reluctantly brought together years later by a second tragedy, the killing of Jimmy's daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum). Sean, now a police detective, is assigned the case, and Dave soon becomes the prime suspect.
Dave has struggled to regain a sense of self and equilibrium after his ordeal. He has a wife, Celeste Marcia Gay Harden), and son but equates his life to that of a movie vampire -- the Undead, a person who appears in human form but is forever transformed and made unclean by the childhood tragedy.
A stint in prison has hardened Jimmy, an ex-thief with a violent temper who runs a corner grocery but still runs with neighborhood toughs. After his wife's death, he has a new wife (Laura Linney), a woman almost as strong-minded as he is.
Sean, the most thinly characterized of the trio, works the streets with his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne). His wife has left him for some unstated reason but makes daily voiceless phone calls to him.
The night of Katie's killing, Dave returns home late, covered with blood. He tells his wife he was mugged and may have killed his assailant. Celeste grows alarmed when no story about an unsolved killing appears in the newspapers. Jimmy, bent on revenge, organizes his own investigation with local roughnecks. Meanwhile, Sean and Whitey argue over whether their main suspect is Dave or Brendan (Thomas Guiry), the boy Katie secretly dated behind her dad's back.
Everything that happens in this movie, even the most casual comment or gesture, gets connected by movie's end, and most connections lead back to the fateful day Dave got into the pedophiles' car. The movie is engrossing, yet the viewer is aware of the hand of fiction. Symbolism lurks everywhere. Young Dave never gets to finish carving his name in wet sidewalk cement when he gets into the car, thus a life interrupted is forever memorialized in cement. And characters sometimes seem to betray natural instincts for the sake of the plot. Would a man's wife really go to an enraged father with the mere suspicion that her husband may be his daughter's murderer? Ultimately, the film is too neat and logical to deal with the messiness of lives made forever dysfunctional by an act of incalculable violence.
High marks go, as is usually the case in Eastwood films, to his technical team, especially Tom Stern's cool cinematography, Henry Bumstead's atmospheric sets and Joel Cox's concise editing.
MYSTIC RIVER
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment a Malpaso production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by: Dennis Lehane
Producers: Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt, Clint Eastwood
Executive producer: Bruce Berman
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Jimmy: Sean Penn
Dave: Tim Robbins
Sean: Kevin Bacon
Whitey: Laurence Fishburne
Celeste: Marcia Gay Harden
Jimmy's wife: Laura Linney
Val Savage: Kevin Chapman
Brendan: Thomas Guiry
Emily: Emmy Rossum
Running time -- 137 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Cannes Film Festival
In "Mystic River", a steadfast belief in determinism rules every moment. A crime seen in the opening sequence will affect, if not infect, every action and response for the rest of the movie. Clint Eastwood, a man who likes to challenge himself more than he is given credit for when he turns to directing, is clearly fascinated by this idea and explores its ramifications in a crisp, well-made, visually astute film that will provoke and divide his admirers.
"Mystic River" is arguably his most ambitious film since his multi-Oscar winner, "Unforgiven". But it lacks the power and depth of that film's dynamic script by David Webb Peoples. Whatever happens in its Competition slot at Cannes, Warner Bros. Pictures can expect at the very least a modest boxoffice success.
As a director, Eastwood has always disdained cinematic fuss and flourishes. His terse style has evolved into an elegant minimalism, where direction of actors, camera placement and editing achieves a lean, unromantic, yet empathetic view of people. Like his mentor Don Siegel, Eastwood prefers to work in movie genres in hopes of transcending their limitations rather than striking off in bold, original directions unburdened by literary antecedents or genre restrictions.
"Mystic River"'s script by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel, deals with the repercussions of child molestation, a topic of vital importance and one of boundless possibilities. Yet Lehane's novel is crime fiction, which steers the movie into an all-too-conventional mode. Eastwood and Helgeland downplay the whodunit aspect of the material -- indeed, the actual identity of the murderer does prove almost irrelevant to the movie's themes -- yet the movie still turns into a police procedural, which distracts from its rage against the crime of child abuse.
Three men are forever transformed by one such crime in a shabby yet communal neighborhood of Boston. Because as a frightened youngster, Dave (Tim Robbins) gets into a car of what turns out to be two sexual predators -- and his buddies Jimmy (Sean Penn) and Sean (Kevin Bacon) do not -- their lives go in different directions. The three are reluctantly brought together years later by a second tragedy, the killing of Jimmy's daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum). Sean, now a police detective, is assigned the case, and Dave soon becomes the prime suspect.
Dave has struggled to regain a sense of self and equilibrium after his ordeal. He has a wife, Celeste Marcia Gay Harden), and son but equates his life to that of a movie vampire -- the Undead, a person who appears in human form but is forever transformed and made unclean by the childhood tragedy.
A stint in prison has hardened Jimmy, an ex-thief with a violent temper who runs a corner grocery but still runs with neighborhood toughs. After his wife's death, he has a new wife (Laura Linney), a woman almost as strong-minded as he is.
Sean, the most thinly characterized of the trio, works the streets with his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne). His wife has left him for some unstated reason but makes daily voiceless phone calls to him.
The night of Katie's killing, Dave returns home late, covered with blood. He tells his wife he was mugged and may have killed his assailant. Celeste grows alarmed when no story about an unsolved killing appears in the newspapers. Jimmy, bent on revenge, organizes his own investigation with local roughnecks. Meanwhile, Sean and Whitey argue over whether their main suspect is Dave or Brendan (Thomas Guiry), the boy Katie secretly dated behind her dad's back.
Everything that happens in this movie, even the most casual comment or gesture, gets connected by movie's end, and most connections lead back to the fateful day Dave got into the pedophiles' car. The movie is engrossing, yet the viewer is aware of the hand of fiction. Symbolism lurks everywhere. Young Dave never gets to finish carving his name in wet sidewalk cement when he gets into the car, thus a life interrupted is forever memorialized in cement. And characters sometimes seem to betray natural instincts for the sake of the plot. Would a man's wife really go to an enraged father with the mere suspicion that her husband may be his daughter's murderer? Ultimately, the film is too neat and logical to deal with the messiness of lives made forever dysfunctional by an act of incalculable violence.
High marks go, as is usually the case in Eastwood films, to his technical team, especially Tom Stern's cool cinematography, Henry Bumstead's atmospheric sets and Joel Cox's concise editing.
MYSTIC RIVER
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment a Malpaso production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by: Dennis Lehane
Producers: Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt, Clint Eastwood
Executive producer: Bruce Berman
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Jimmy: Sean Penn
Dave: Tim Robbins
Sean: Kevin Bacon
Whitey: Laurence Fishburne
Celeste: Marcia Gay Harden
Jimmy's wife: Laura Linney
Val Savage: Kevin Chapman
Brendan: Thomas Guiry
Emily: Emmy Rossum
Running time -- 137 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/9/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"Blood Work", Clint Eastwood's 23rd film as a director -- and 44th as a star -- takes us into the familiar territory of a cop-crime thriller. Only it gives us a quick sucker punch when Eastwood's character suddenly collapses with a heart attack. Brian Helgeland's screenplay is based on the first novel in Michael Connelly's mystery series featuring Terry McCaleb, a veteran FBI profiler forced into retirement by a heart transplant. This allows Eastwood, the ultimate movie cowboy, to play age and fragility in a character up against not only a master criminal but also his own mortality.
With Eastwood's direction its customary smooth and efficient self backed by his usual handpicked crew of top professionals, "Blood Work" fits snugly into the "classic" Eastwood mode -- an entertaining suspense thriller populated by hard-edged characters who brighten up a somewhat mechanical plot. Warner Bros. Pictures can anticipate solid boxoffice returns here and overseas.
If Sherlock Holmes had his seven-percent solution, then detective McCaleb has a fistful of pills he swallows daily to keep his new heart ticking. As a man with a new but tenuous lease on life, Eastwood walks through this movie gingerly. Yet the rolling gait is that of a man used to macho action. He is struggling to come to terms with his new self, happy to be alive yet flummoxed by the go-slow approach dictated by his condition.
Nothing could drag him from his boat docked in San Pedro Harbor until a determined Graciela Rivers Wanda De Jesus) shows him a photo of her murdered sister. The heart harvested from her late sister is now beating in McCaleb's chest. She asks him to use his skills to solve her sister's murder.
McCaleb's cardiologist (Anjelica Huston) has a fit. Sure enough, the stress of his new case adversely impacts his health, but he pushes himself to solve the case.
McCaleb is decidedly old-school and low-tech. He takes taxis, and his only phone is a pay phone on the marina dock. Eventually, he enlists a neighbor, a beach bum named Buddy (Jeff Daniels), to chauffeur him to his appointments, turning the two into, in Buddy's words, "Starsky and Putz".
Helgeland's script moves gracefully through a series of Southern California locales and vivid characters as red herrings crop up here and there. McCaleb is seemingly in confrontation with everyone -- a couple of hotheaded suspects; a jealous, bitter police detective (Paul Rodriguez in an against-type performance); his doctor, of course; a mysterious stranger tailing him; and sometimes even an old pal in the sheriff's office, Detective Jaye Winston (Tina Lifford), whose manner suggests that sparks once flew between the two.
The retired FBI man carries no badge, a fact he must fudge in interviews with witnesses and suspects. He must also engage in physical confrontations and gunplay that no one 60 days removed from heart-transplant surgery is likely to endure. But this is, after all, crime fiction.
In this regard, the film's surprise ending may satisfy some while disappointing others over its unlikelihood. It comes damn close to "the butler did it." But, clearly, "Blood Work" is designed more to examine character than to solve a mystery. McCaleb is a neat twist on the usual tough-guy heroes in American crime tales. Indeed, for once in a cop movie we see an obnoxious detective, an unsympathetic doctor and crime victims who fight back.
Few directors cast movies as well as Eastwood. Here he again has the right actors in unusual roles, and the actors respond with dynamic performances. Eastwood effectively employs Lennie Niehaus' cool jazz stylings over opening and end credits, while debuting cinematographer Tom Stern's atmospheric camera and Henry Bumstead's intriguing design create a Southern California where blood seems to be everyone's work.
BLOOD WORK
Warner Bros. Pictures
A Malpaso production
Credits:
Director-producer: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by: Michael Connelly
Executive producer: Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Lennie Niehaus
Co-producer: Judie G. Hoyt
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Terry McCaleb: Clint Eastwood
Buddy Noone: Jeff Daniels
Dr Bonnie Fox: Anjelica Huston
Graciela Rivers: Wanda De Jesus
Jaye Winston: Tina Lifford
Detective Arrango: Paul Rodriguez
Detective Waller: Dylan Walsh
Raymond: Mason Lucero
Running time -- 110 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
With Eastwood's direction its customary smooth and efficient self backed by his usual handpicked crew of top professionals, "Blood Work" fits snugly into the "classic" Eastwood mode -- an entertaining suspense thriller populated by hard-edged characters who brighten up a somewhat mechanical plot. Warner Bros. Pictures can anticipate solid boxoffice returns here and overseas.
If Sherlock Holmes had his seven-percent solution, then detective McCaleb has a fistful of pills he swallows daily to keep his new heart ticking. As a man with a new but tenuous lease on life, Eastwood walks through this movie gingerly. Yet the rolling gait is that of a man used to macho action. He is struggling to come to terms with his new self, happy to be alive yet flummoxed by the go-slow approach dictated by his condition.
Nothing could drag him from his boat docked in San Pedro Harbor until a determined Graciela Rivers Wanda De Jesus) shows him a photo of her murdered sister. The heart harvested from her late sister is now beating in McCaleb's chest. She asks him to use his skills to solve her sister's murder.
McCaleb's cardiologist (Anjelica Huston) has a fit. Sure enough, the stress of his new case adversely impacts his health, but he pushes himself to solve the case.
McCaleb is decidedly old-school and low-tech. He takes taxis, and his only phone is a pay phone on the marina dock. Eventually, he enlists a neighbor, a beach bum named Buddy (Jeff Daniels), to chauffeur him to his appointments, turning the two into, in Buddy's words, "Starsky and Putz".
Helgeland's script moves gracefully through a series of Southern California locales and vivid characters as red herrings crop up here and there. McCaleb is seemingly in confrontation with everyone -- a couple of hotheaded suspects; a jealous, bitter police detective (Paul Rodriguez in an against-type performance); his doctor, of course; a mysterious stranger tailing him; and sometimes even an old pal in the sheriff's office, Detective Jaye Winston (Tina Lifford), whose manner suggests that sparks once flew between the two.
The retired FBI man carries no badge, a fact he must fudge in interviews with witnesses and suspects. He must also engage in physical confrontations and gunplay that no one 60 days removed from heart-transplant surgery is likely to endure. But this is, after all, crime fiction.
In this regard, the film's surprise ending may satisfy some while disappointing others over its unlikelihood. It comes damn close to "the butler did it." But, clearly, "Blood Work" is designed more to examine character than to solve a mystery. McCaleb is a neat twist on the usual tough-guy heroes in American crime tales. Indeed, for once in a cop movie we see an obnoxious detective, an unsympathetic doctor and crime victims who fight back.
Few directors cast movies as well as Eastwood. Here he again has the right actors in unusual roles, and the actors respond with dynamic performances. Eastwood effectively employs Lennie Niehaus' cool jazz stylings over opening and end credits, while debuting cinematographer Tom Stern's atmospheric camera and Henry Bumstead's intriguing design create a Southern California where blood seems to be everyone's work.
BLOOD WORK
Warner Bros. Pictures
A Malpaso production
Credits:
Director-producer: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by: Michael Connelly
Executive producer: Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Lennie Niehaus
Co-producer: Judie G. Hoyt
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
Terry McCaleb: Clint Eastwood
Buddy Noone: Jeff Daniels
Dr Bonnie Fox: Anjelica Huston
Graciela Rivers: Wanda De Jesus
Jaye Winston: Tina Lifford
Detective Arrango: Paul Rodriguez
Detective Waller: Dylan Walsh
Raymond: Mason Lucero
Running time -- 110 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Following Brian De Palma bravely into outer space, Clint Eastwood has come up with a sometimes entertaining but, more often than not, awkward comic drama that can't quite get a handle on its own intentions. While Eastwood's "Space Cowboys" does achieve liftoff, unlike De Palma's "Mission to Mars", which ignobly crashed and burned, one gets the feeling space movies suit neither filmmaker's style or temperament.
What may puzzle many is the degree of sentimentality the actor-director lavishes on his heroes, which may have something to do with age. For in "Space", a geriatric version of "Armageddon", he treats us to scene after scene that kids or dramatizes the fact that he and his co-stars -- Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner -- are no longer youngsters.
The film is very much tailored for these veteran actors, and, naturally, the old guys have ample opportunity to show the movie's young hotshots a thing or two. But what will Eastwood's loyal fans think of him as a senior citizen? And how will younger audiences respond to a movie whose heroes are all candidates for the retirement home? Warner Bros. has a tough sell on its hands.
In a disorienting black-and-white prologue, set in 1958, the movie introduces most of the film's main characters as their early selves, all played by young performers but given voice by the older actors. The personalities and conflicts are established among Team Daedalus, a group of Air Force test pilots pushing the envelope on America's most experimental jet aircraft. When NASA abruptly takes over the space program, their jobs are terminated by an obnoxious officer and -- salting the wounds -- a chimpanzee is designated the nation's first astronaut.
Cut to present day, where the officer, now a NASA bureaucrat (James Cromwell), must reluctantly reassemble Team Daedalus for a priority mission. An old Soviet satellite has failed, and for reasons kept deliberately vague, it is crucial to the United States and Russia that its antiquated guidance system gets repaired. Oddly enough -- and again vagueness will pay off at the climax -- its guidance system is identical to the one designed by Eastwood's character for a now obsolete American satellite. And he is the only Man Alive who knows how to repair the damn thing.
Most of the movie's midsection is taken up with old hostilities -- between Eastwood and Jones and between Cromwell and the entire Team Daedalus -- along with endless age jokes. The oldsters train alongside young-stud astronauts but find ways to outperform -- or at least outthink -- the kids.
This section also contains a strong contender for this year's most unnecessary scene -- the four old guys shot Buck Naked from the back getting a short-arm inspection by a female doctor. An even greater clinker in Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner's screenplay bestows inoperable cancer on Jones, which sets him up for a noble sacrifice in space.
"Space"'s elegiac lament for departed youth, a staple theme of many westerns, fits strangely with the movie's futuristic space hardware and techno-lingo. And Eastwood's directing style is something of a throwback to science fiction of the 1950s.
Having learned much of his trim, suspenseful craftsmanship from his "Dirty Harry" director, Don Siegel, Eastwood takes a no-nonsense approach to outer space. It's just another lonesome prairie to him. Thus, his outer space has none of the touchy-feely mysticism of "Star Trek", the hip B-movie thrills of "Star Wars" or the space opera grandeur of "2001: A Space Odyssey".
Younger viewers may be mystified by such laconic characters and stripped-bare efficiency in a space movie. But it's refreshing to see a movie refuse to treat the nuts and bolts of space travel with awe. And as with most of his films, Eastwood's actors deliver clipped, on-target performances that resonate without muss or fuss.
Eastwood's longtime collaborators -- camerman Jack Green, designer Henry Bumstead, editor Joel Cox and composer Lennie Niehaus -- support him with their usual all-pro work.
SPACE COWBOYS
Warner Bros.
In association with
Village Roadshow Pictures/Clipsal Film
A Malpaso and Mad Chance production
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Lazar
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: Ken Kaufman & Howard Klausner
Executive producer: Tom Rooker
Director of photography: Jack N. Green
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Lennie Niehaus
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Color/stereo
Cast:
Frank Corvin: Clint Eastwood
Hawk Hawkins: Tommy Lee Jones
Jerry O'Neil: Donald Sutherland
Tank Sullivan: James Garner
Ethan Glance: Loren Dean
Roger Hines: Courtney B. Vance
Sara Holland: Marcia Gay Harden
Bob Gerson: James Cromwell
Eugene Davis: William Devane
Running time - 130 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
What may puzzle many is the degree of sentimentality the actor-director lavishes on his heroes, which may have something to do with age. For in "Space", a geriatric version of "Armageddon", he treats us to scene after scene that kids or dramatizes the fact that he and his co-stars -- Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner -- are no longer youngsters.
The film is very much tailored for these veteran actors, and, naturally, the old guys have ample opportunity to show the movie's young hotshots a thing or two. But what will Eastwood's loyal fans think of him as a senior citizen? And how will younger audiences respond to a movie whose heroes are all candidates for the retirement home? Warner Bros. has a tough sell on its hands.
In a disorienting black-and-white prologue, set in 1958, the movie introduces most of the film's main characters as their early selves, all played by young performers but given voice by the older actors. The personalities and conflicts are established among Team Daedalus, a group of Air Force test pilots pushing the envelope on America's most experimental jet aircraft. When NASA abruptly takes over the space program, their jobs are terminated by an obnoxious officer and -- salting the wounds -- a chimpanzee is designated the nation's first astronaut.
Cut to present day, where the officer, now a NASA bureaucrat (James Cromwell), must reluctantly reassemble Team Daedalus for a priority mission. An old Soviet satellite has failed, and for reasons kept deliberately vague, it is crucial to the United States and Russia that its antiquated guidance system gets repaired. Oddly enough -- and again vagueness will pay off at the climax -- its guidance system is identical to the one designed by Eastwood's character for a now obsolete American satellite. And he is the only Man Alive who knows how to repair the damn thing.
Most of the movie's midsection is taken up with old hostilities -- between Eastwood and Jones and between Cromwell and the entire Team Daedalus -- along with endless age jokes. The oldsters train alongside young-stud astronauts but find ways to outperform -- or at least outthink -- the kids.
This section also contains a strong contender for this year's most unnecessary scene -- the four old guys shot Buck Naked from the back getting a short-arm inspection by a female doctor. An even greater clinker in Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner's screenplay bestows inoperable cancer on Jones, which sets him up for a noble sacrifice in space.
"Space"'s elegiac lament for departed youth, a staple theme of many westerns, fits strangely with the movie's futuristic space hardware and techno-lingo. And Eastwood's directing style is something of a throwback to science fiction of the 1950s.
Having learned much of his trim, suspenseful craftsmanship from his "Dirty Harry" director, Don Siegel, Eastwood takes a no-nonsense approach to outer space. It's just another lonesome prairie to him. Thus, his outer space has none of the touchy-feely mysticism of "Star Trek", the hip B-movie thrills of "Star Wars" or the space opera grandeur of "2001: A Space Odyssey".
Younger viewers may be mystified by such laconic characters and stripped-bare efficiency in a space movie. But it's refreshing to see a movie refuse to treat the nuts and bolts of space travel with awe. And as with most of his films, Eastwood's actors deliver clipped, on-target performances that resonate without muss or fuss.
Eastwood's longtime collaborators -- camerman Jack Green, designer Henry Bumstead, editor Joel Cox and composer Lennie Niehaus -- support him with their usual all-pro work.
SPACE COWBOYS
Warner Bros.
In association with
Village Roadshow Pictures/Clipsal Film
A Malpaso and Mad Chance production
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Lazar
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: Ken Kaufman & Howard Klausner
Executive producer: Tom Rooker
Director of photography: Jack N. Green
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Lennie Niehaus
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Color/stereo
Cast:
Frank Corvin: Clint Eastwood
Hawk Hawkins: Tommy Lee Jones
Jerry O'Neil: Donald Sutherland
Tank Sullivan: James Garner
Ethan Glance: Loren Dean
Roger Hines: Courtney B. Vance
Sara Holland: Marcia Gay Harden
Bob Gerson: James Cromwell
Eugene Davis: William Devane
Running time - 130 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 7/31/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
After the massive success of 1990's "Home Alone" and 1992's "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York", the nagging question remains, "Can there be life after Macaulay Culkin?"
The answer is yes. And no.
While "Home Alone 3" is a virtual Xerox of the oft-imitated "Home Alone" blueprint, young Alex D. Linz ("One Fine Day") makes for a highly charming lead and, as a whole, the John Hughes-penned script isn't as mean-spirited as the previous installment.
And, despite the relative sameness of it all, Hughes still manages to throw in a funny wrinkle here and there, keeping the high jinks humming.
But while the studio probably doesn't want to hear this, the secret of the franchise's success wasn't so much the endless pratfalls or good-vs.-evil through-line as it was the presence of Culkin, particularly the 8-year-old version, whose wide-eyed projection of innocence and mischief instantly made him America's favorite everykid.
Although the irresistible Linz certainly gets the job done (he's actually the better actor of the two), it just isn't "Home Alone" without Culkin's Kevin McCallister. As a result, while the Fox release should do solid holiday business, particularly with boys, it won't be reaching the lofty boxoffice heights of its predecessors.
The picture's rather drawn-out set up involves a group of black marketeers who pinch a top secret Defense Department computer chip and hide it in a toy car only to find out it has been misrouted to a sleepy Chicago suburb.
Of course, all audiences really are concerned about is how 8-year-old Alex Pruitt (Linz) will defend his home against the quartet of criminal masterminds (Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, David Thornton and Lenny Von Dohlen) who are determined to reclaim their booty by any means necessary.
Wisely, veteran editor and first-time director Raja Gosnell (he cut the two previous "Home Alone" editions) wastes little extra time in getting to the good stuff as we watch little Alex, who's been sidelined by the measels, turn everyday household objects into state-of-the-art booby traps.
While Hughes can pretty well write this stuff in his sleep by now (even his treatments of "101 Dalmatians" and "Flubber" boasted "Home Alone"-style battles), there are still moments of inventiveness to be found, manifested by the helpful presence of a pet white rat and an Amazon parrot. Then there's an extended and admittedly clever sequence involving a camcorder taped to said Remote Control toy car that will have thousands of kiddies hastily adding pricey Tyco Mutators to their Christmas lists.
In addition to Linz, the cast is fine, although it would have been nice if the quartet of interchangeable bad guys were given some individual traits. Catherine O'Hara lookalike Haviland Morris is fine as Alex's distracted mom, while stage great Marian Seldes as sour-faced neighbor Mrs. Hess has a firm grasp on that obligatory Hughes character -- the crotchety old person who ends up forming a special bond with the pint-sized protagonist.
HOME ALONE 3
20th Century Fox
A John Hughes production
Director: Raja Gosnell
Screenwriter: John Hughes
Producers: John Hughes, Hilton Green
Executive producer: Ricardo Mestres
Director of photographer: Julio Macat
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Nick Glennie-Smith
Costume designer: Jodie Tillen
Editors: Bruce Green, Malcolm Campbell, David Rennie Casting: Billy Hopkins, Suzanne Smith, Kerry Barden, Jennifer McNamara
Color/stereo
Cast:
Alex: Alex D. Linz
Karen Pruitt: Haviland Morris
Beaupre: Olek Krupa
Alice: Rya Kihlstedt
Unger: David Thornton
Jernigan: Lenny Von Dohlen
Jack Pruitt: Kevin Kilner
Mrs. Hess: Marian Seldes
Running time --103 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG...
The answer is yes. And no.
While "Home Alone 3" is a virtual Xerox of the oft-imitated "Home Alone" blueprint, young Alex D. Linz ("One Fine Day") makes for a highly charming lead and, as a whole, the John Hughes-penned script isn't as mean-spirited as the previous installment.
And, despite the relative sameness of it all, Hughes still manages to throw in a funny wrinkle here and there, keeping the high jinks humming.
But while the studio probably doesn't want to hear this, the secret of the franchise's success wasn't so much the endless pratfalls or good-vs.-evil through-line as it was the presence of Culkin, particularly the 8-year-old version, whose wide-eyed projection of innocence and mischief instantly made him America's favorite everykid.
Although the irresistible Linz certainly gets the job done (he's actually the better actor of the two), it just isn't "Home Alone" without Culkin's Kevin McCallister. As a result, while the Fox release should do solid holiday business, particularly with boys, it won't be reaching the lofty boxoffice heights of its predecessors.
The picture's rather drawn-out set up involves a group of black marketeers who pinch a top secret Defense Department computer chip and hide it in a toy car only to find out it has been misrouted to a sleepy Chicago suburb.
Of course, all audiences really are concerned about is how 8-year-old Alex Pruitt (Linz) will defend his home against the quartet of criminal masterminds (Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, David Thornton and Lenny Von Dohlen) who are determined to reclaim their booty by any means necessary.
Wisely, veteran editor and first-time director Raja Gosnell (he cut the two previous "Home Alone" editions) wastes little extra time in getting to the good stuff as we watch little Alex, who's been sidelined by the measels, turn everyday household objects into state-of-the-art booby traps.
While Hughes can pretty well write this stuff in his sleep by now (even his treatments of "101 Dalmatians" and "Flubber" boasted "Home Alone"-style battles), there are still moments of inventiveness to be found, manifested by the helpful presence of a pet white rat and an Amazon parrot. Then there's an extended and admittedly clever sequence involving a camcorder taped to said Remote Control toy car that will have thousands of kiddies hastily adding pricey Tyco Mutators to their Christmas lists.
In addition to Linz, the cast is fine, although it would have been nice if the quartet of interchangeable bad guys were given some individual traits. Catherine O'Hara lookalike Haviland Morris is fine as Alex's distracted mom, while stage great Marian Seldes as sour-faced neighbor Mrs. Hess has a firm grasp on that obligatory Hughes character -- the crotchety old person who ends up forming a special bond with the pint-sized protagonist.
HOME ALONE 3
20th Century Fox
A John Hughes production
Director: Raja Gosnell
Screenwriter: John Hughes
Producers: John Hughes, Hilton Green
Executive producer: Ricardo Mestres
Director of photographer: Julio Macat
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Nick Glennie-Smith
Costume designer: Jodie Tillen
Editors: Bruce Green, Malcolm Campbell, David Rennie Casting: Billy Hopkins, Suzanne Smith, Kerry Barden, Jennifer McNamara
Color/stereo
Cast:
Alex: Alex D. Linz
Karen Pruitt: Haviland Morris
Beaupre: Olek Krupa
Alice: Rya Kihlstedt
Unger: David Thornton
Jernigan: Lenny Von Dohlen
Jack Pruitt: Kevin Kilner
Mrs. Hess: Marian Seldes
Running time --103 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG...
- 12/8/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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