Welcome to June, and we are officially starting to see the summer roll-outs for the Hollywood Summer Film Season. Starting with Wonder Woman, which has had some great reviews so far, we are seeing some of the early winners and losers. As we started listing them last week in the Summer Film Newsletter from 6 Degrees, it seems that King Arthur was an early casualty.
And at Cannes, the list of winners is included in this week’s 6 Degrees magazine. Sofia Coppola was awarded Best Director for her remake of the Clint Eastwood vehicle that is starring Nicole Kidman, The Beguiled. And the top prize went to a Swedish film, an art-world satire called The Square.
Some other surprises or break-out performances at Cannes included great reviews for Adam Sandler and Robert Pattinson (of Twilight fame). And one of the former darlings of European cinema, Fugitive Director Roman Polanski’s film, Based on a True Story, was said to be sadly flat. You never can tell…
So…after Cannes, and before July 4th drops, there are some other note-worthy articles this past week. The number of LGBT characters in films, as with women and women directors, is still far short from where they could be as represented on film and in the film world. Jessica Chastain also discussed the way females are portrayed in films and describes it as “disturbing” during an interview at Cannes. There are some who are working to change the way things have always been done in Hollywood, but the entrenched attitudes have been around for over 100 years (as depicted in my book, 6 Degrees of Film).
One of the trends that is encouraging surrounds the opening of Wonder Woman and how much positive feedback the female director and some of the reviews have garnered. There’s a good article in Vanity Fair about tracing Wonder Woman’s Cinematic Origins also.
One amusing piece from earlier this week was about Johnny Depp and his predilection for having his lines fed to him through a microphone. And honestly, if I was Depp and had to literally walk through the performances he has given for basically the same movie over and over, I might be tempted…
There’s a good piece in The Guardian from director John Boorman talking frankly about some of the problems and challenges as he filmed the classic Deliverance, with Ned Beatty and Jon Voight. There’s also in the Guardian, an article discussing some of the pitfalls in trying to remake another classic, the Al Pacino gangster film Scarface, directed by Brian de Palma. And for those who are looking for something a little different in their film viewing, Rolling Stone has a list of “Alternate-Summer Movies” to preview.
Some of the films with positive reviews, besides Wonder Woman, include the new drama about Winston Churchill, and the kids movie based on the best-seller, “The Adventures of Captain Underpants.”
For film buffs like me, there’s an article talking about the classic Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup, from 1933, directed by Leo McCarey. At times, the Marx Brothers could be a bit irritating to me, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Duck Soup and the plot surrounding the mythical Freedonia.
And in that vein, the newest books about film are recommended in the Out of the Past Blog. The original film, The Beguiled which was mentioned above as being remade by Sofia Coppola and starring Nicole Kidman, was a vehicle for Clint Eastwood back in 1971. He was playing another anti-hero, but this one was not as commercially successful as his other major hits in the day, so this is an interesting choice for a remake. The original is reviewed in 6 Degrees magazine.
There’s a review of the upcoming Lady Macbeth and also a list of the top ten movies from 1947! So check out the 6 Degrees magazine, and the Summer Film Newsletter that we released last week. Hope you are enjoying the summer days and look forward to seeing you at the movies!-ML
Six Degrees of Film 