Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone to Make Film About G.W. Bush
Director Oliver Stone is shopping around a script for a movie about President George W. Bush, which he hopes will enter production by April, Variety reports. Up for playing the (surely entertaining) role of G.W. is No County For Old Men star Josh Brolin, who, Mr. Stone told Variety, is better looking than our current president, “but has the same drive and charisma that Americans identify with Bush, who has some of that old-time movie-star swagger.” Mr. Stone, who has made films about past all-star presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, promises that his Bush project will be “fair,” containing “surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors.”
Pinkville, Angels & Demons Shelved Due to Strike
Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code sequel, Angels & Demons, and Oliver Stone's Pinkville were shelved during the weekend because scribes can't finish writing the scripts during the strike, according to Variety. read more »
Stone's World Trade Center: Can Two Stand for Many?
The Politicker
Time perfectly with the release of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, of course.
—Nicole BrydsonThe Politicker
Time perfectly with the release of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, of course.
—Nicole BrydsonA Taste of Cindy
Today's Post gives Cindy Adams a much-deserved page-one teaser: "WTC: Why I hate this lousy movie."
Inside, on page 14, Cindy--self-nominated as "New York's watchdog" (motion seconded! And carried!)--touches all the critical bases:
* Filmgoing experience? "Slow-moving and formulaic."
* Commercial prospects? Oliver Stone's "handlers are moving him around with a tweezer. Must be, like on that actual day itself, they, too, can smell death."
* Factual accuracy? "Goshen to Manhattan for a cop driver on an empty highway at that hour is an hour and 15....He couldn't still be driving at 6 a.m."
* The ethics of commodifying and aestheticizing the mass murder of thousands of people, thereby reinforcing the horrifying success of the terrorists in their principal aim of creating an unforgettable spectacle? "When it came to filming, the city wouldn't allow Oliver Stone to close off those streets again and again, dress them with ash and debris and personal belongings and bleeding bodies, and more screams and agonies and horror and people jumping from windows...[F]ilm crews were permitted establishing shots, skyline shots, outdoor location shots only as close as Canal Street. The rest was newsreel footage, CGI graphics and whatever real pain they could fake in the studios in L.A.....I now report these Hollywood people out for a buck should have left us alone."
Cf. David Denby in the New Yorker, calling United 93 "a hundred percent professional filmmaking" and "true existential filmmaking," in the belief that settles anything. read more »
Plus, a restaurant manager kissed her! And a waiter!
Today's score:
Five Yorkies!
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
Now, don't those $10.50 tickets sting a little less?
-Matthew Schuerman
