I’ll admit that on the surface there’s nothing terribly deep to this topic of discussion, which is fairly self explanatory. But there’s something powerful in the well-composed film title that can evoke that visceral hunger in your stomach with just the right words. Words that represent foods you’ve tasted, tastes that trigger food memories that can water your mouth like a Pavlovian dog, trained to take notice subconsciously at the mere suggestion of an idea.

Such was my immediate response to this week’s A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (international title: A Simple Noodle Story), Zhang Yimou’s colorful Chinese remake of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple. The film itself has little to do with food, save being set in a remote noodle shop and its adjoining estate, where a bitter old shop owner (Ni Dahong ) plots to kill his much-younger wife (Yan Ni) and the employee she’s having an affair with (Xiao Shenyang). But the title — simple, evocative, suggesting the elemental nature of all three of its parts — well, it got me.

I love noodles, see. Yimou had me on the hook at “noodle shop,” and thankfully he includes a single scene of noodle-making in his screwball thriller. In said scene we see the shop’s three lowly, buffoonish employees spring to action as a dynamic noodle-making team: they roll the dough, flip and flatten it in the air between them like jugglers, slice the noodles into strips to cook, and cover the delectable thick slabs in steaming broth before serving them in comically giant bowls.

Just reading the title of Yimou’s film brings back my memories of that scene, which in turn makes me hungry. Such is the power of the well-composed film title. With food and film on the brain, I offer seven more movie titles that make me salivate.

Filed under: New Releases, Movie Marketing, Cinematical Seven

Continue reading Cinematical Seven: Movie Titles That Make Us Hungry

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Welcome to Framed, a column at Cinematical that celebrates the artistry of cinema — one frame at a time.

For most of his career, Canadian director David Cronenberg has been known for his intelligent and disturbing genre films. However, Cronenberg isn’t just a horror filmmaker — he’s a genuine auteur with a keen visual eye and a recurring set of thematic concerns that turn up in the majority of his work. Unfortunately, it has taken the director crossing over into more mainstream fare to get people to notice how truly talented he is. Yet, even Cronenberg’s more commercial cinema marries beautiful imagery and extreme violence in an uncomfortably alluring fashion. One need look no further than his work with actor Viggo Mortensen for proof of that.

Today we’ll be looking at a frame from one the duo’s collaborations, 2007’s Russian mob drama Eastern Promises.

Mortensen plays Nikolai, the chauffeur/cleaner for a Russian mafia boss in London. He meets Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife, after she starts snooping around in his boss’ business when she finds a diary on a young Russian girl who dies in childbirth. Nikolai tries to keep her out of harm’s way while rising through the ranks of the Russian crime syndicate and finding his own life in peril. It’s hard to discuss the film’s narrative with any more detail than that because to reveal too much ruins what is a masterful film. Trust me when I say that if you haven’t seen Eastern Promises, you should.

You should also stop reading here because there is a big spoiler ahead. Hopefully you’ll see the movie — which is definitely a Blu-ray worthy purchase — and then come back to read the analysis.

Filed under: Drama, Critical Thought, Columns, Images

Continue reading Framed: Eastern Promises

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“If you’re gonna hire Machete to kill the bad guy, you better make damn sure the bad guy isn’t you!“

As uttered in the original fake trailer attached to Grindhouse in 2007, that line sums up the charm of Machete as both a fleeting concept and, now, a feature-length endeavor. Robert Rodriguez has expanded that two-minute dose of goofy Mexploitation thrills into a somewhat ungainly, but mostly fun 105 minutes.

Danny Trejo, second cousin to Rodriguez, returns as the former Federale-turned-freedom fighter, a super-stoic anti-hero with a knack for taking out the bad guys and lovin’ the ladies. In the former group falls Robert De Niro as a Texas senator hellbent on keeping immigrants out of this great land of his, Jeff Fahey as his shady right-hand man, Don Johnson as a proud minuteman and Steven Seagal as the drug lord who cost Machete his family. Among the latter ranks are Michelle Rodriguez as a Che-like leader of the downtrodden, Jessica Alba as the ICE agent on her tail and Lindsay Lohan as Fahey’s incest-inviting dope of a daughter. (And that’s not even to mention the supporting appearances by Shea Whigham, Tom Savini and Cheech Marin.)

Filed under: Action, Comedy, Theatrical Reviews, 20th Century Fox

Continue reading Review: Machete

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International box office is obviously very important to films that are made in the U.S. Many times, domestic productions only become profitable after the world has had a chance to sample the goods. It makes sense that some movie titles will be changed in order to better communicate the movie’s concept; especially with so many relying on English-language idioms and slang that doesn’t translate well into other languages. Two films released today in France provide good examples.

Frederic Ambroisine, filmmaker and film critic, tweeted today that Get Him to the Greek has received a limited release in Paris, retitled as American Trip, while Youth in Revolt has been changed to Be Bad!. The former sounds vanilla, though the German version, pictured above, looks better; I prefer the Spanish title, Todo Sobre Mi Desmadre, which sounds positively decadent (All About My Total Chaos?). But I like the idea of Michael Cera trying to Be Bad! (love that added exclamation mark, and the phrase comes straight from the movie). In Mexico it’s known as La chica de mis suenos (The Girl of My Dreams), which sounds pretty sappy.

Filed under: Comedy, Movie Marketing, Posters, Twitter

Continue reading How Important is a Film Title to International Audiences?

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Toy Story 3

If you’re like me, you’ve already pre-ordered the DVD or Blu-Ray, but if you’re undecided, here are highlights of what you can expect from each version:

Filed under: Action, Animation, Comedy

Continue reading Shiny New Details on the ‘Toy Story 3′ Blu-Ray/DVD

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In October of 2009, Kristian Anderson was diagnosed with bowel cancer — and the news got worse: it had spread to his liver. The 35-year-old husband and father didn’t let the diagnosis get him down, though — and has since spent his time between chemotherapy treatments urging men to get tested early and often, saying “If I had got tests done when I first suspected something, I might have only had bowel cancer and they could have just gone straight in and cut it out … It doesn’t matter if it’s nothing but the best thing you can do is find out it’s nothing.”

With his wife Rachel’s birthday approaching, Anderson wanted to do something special for her. He got in touch with a local radio show who helped him reach out to actor Hugh Jackman and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. With those two on board (Rachel’s from New Zealand, hence the Prime Minister’s appearance), Anderson made her a special birthday video that’s sure to have you reaching for the Kleenex.

Using hand-written messages on poster board (because he says his wife claims he talks too much), Anderson expresses his love for his wife. In case that wasn’t enough, Jackman pops in through the magic of editing to actually voice the sentiment. It’s one of those touching, beautiful and sad videos that we see a lot more often thanks to the Internet. Rachel’s clearly a lucky lady.

Watch the video for yourself after the jump — just be prepared for a good case of misty-eye syndrome when it’s over.

Filed under: Romance, DIY/Filmmaking, Trailers and Clips

Continue reading Hugh Jackman Stars in Cancer Patient’s “Thank You” Video to His Wife

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“I’m writing three things right now, honey. I’m busting booty!” she said. “Girlfight was my first movie, and now I’m like, ten years later, a decade later, I’m ready to do what I got into the business for, and I’m doing three projects right now… It’s gnarly. Hopefully something will pop out of this, and we can start making some cool movies with chicks in it.”

The first and most tangible script is a remake of the German films Bandits, about four girls who get together as a band behind bars. “That’s gonna be fun to cast, man,” Rodriguez said, laughing. “I’m about 40 pages into it, into the second act, and I’m loving it. I’ve got a new stylized kind of format to shoot it in, and I’m hoping that we find some interesting and some cool director to pull it off. Because it’s not every day you come across someone who understands beauty in the [mundane], and I need somebody like that to both shoot it and direct it, so it’s going to be tough.

It’s not just the story line. The story line, for me, is easy. It comes second nature [to me]. The hard part is going to be finding somebody to interpret it and understand what sexy is and what beautiful is and what pop culture is, because all of these elements are going to be so important to the project.”

Filed under: Action, RumorMonger, Scripts, Newsstand

Continue reading ‘Machete’s Michelle Rodriguez on Making “Cool Movies with Chicks in It”

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One of the strangest Public Service Announcements ever filmed has been making the rounds on the Internet over the course of the past few weeks, and we couldn’t resist the urge to share it with you.

Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) stars in this 1992 PSA warning viewers against the dangers of crack cocaine while explaining exactly what crack is and how no one knows how much it takes to kill you. Pee-Wee then reminds everyone that it’s okay to want to be cool, but doing it with crack isn’t just wrong — it could be dead wrong!

The clip is bizarre because Herman is a comedian who appealed to young children (who probably weren’t quite ready to start smoking crack yet) and stoners (who’d already found their drug of choice) — plus how hard is it to take Pee-Wee seriously about anything? I spent the whole time waiting for him to bust out his iconic laugh or start shouting, “I know you are but what am I?” when someone called him a crackhead.

Clearly, videos like this demonstrate why we pretty much lost the war on drugs — the government guys authorizing these ads obviously had no idea who would get through to their target audience. In Herman’s defense, he made the video as part of his plea deal after his arrest for indecent exposure inside a Florida porn theater. Under those circumstances, it seems unlikely that Pee-Wee got to make any suggestions or offer up any potential rewrites to punch up the dialogue a bit.

Check out the video after the jump — then let us know what you thought of one the lesser films in Pee-Wee’s filmography in the comments section below.

Filed under: Fandom, Trailers and Clips, Stars in Rewind

Continue reading Stars in Rewind: Pee-Wee Herman Fights Crack Cocaine

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This year, Eric D. Snider and I will be bringing you the news and reviews from Colorado. (It’s Eric’s first trip, which is doubly exciting.) And the line-up, announced earlier today, looks excellent, showcasing Cannes favorites like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful, Mike Leigh’s Another Year, and Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe, as well as high-profile premieres like Mark Romanek’s eagerly awaited Never Let Me Go (with superstar novelist Kazuo Ishiguro in attendance) and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, which is getting major Oscar buzz for Colin Firth.

The title that really makes me tingle with anticipation is Peter Weir’s POW flick The Way Back. Weir makes two movies a decade these days, if we’re lucky, and they’re always good. (I am maybe the world’s biggest Peter Weir fan; two of his movies — The Truman Show and Gallipoli — would make my all-time top 20 if I were to construct one.) Weir is getting one of the festival’s “Silver Medallion” awards, which is usually a bit of an exercise in who-can-we-get-to-come, but this is a great choice. The festival will also be screening Weir’s long-lost 1979 horror film The Plumber, which I have never seen and will do my very best to catch.

Filed under: Telluride

Continue reading 2010 Telluride Line-Up Includes Peter Weir, ‘Never Let Me Go’ and More

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Apple’s new Ping service for iTunes prompted a declaration from “Big Fish” screenwriter John August today, and he’s obviously been hanging out with Mac products for some time, given his outlook for it. Elsewhere, director Jason Matzer gave a micro-review of George Clooney’s new flick “The American,” and though we already new Eli Roth loves “The Last Exorcism,” we didn’t know he liked it enough to puke for it.

There was plenty of excitement in Twitter-Wood in the last 24 hours, too. Diddy seems to have sworn off cheeseburgers, while Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus got to get together for a small group shot with their fellow cast members from “LOL” and Jon Favreau picked a ride to go on with Olivia Wilde.

Find out what they jumped on after the break. I’m @brianwarmoth, and this is Twitter-Wood for September 2, 2010.

Twitter Pic of the Day:
@mrskutcher The mothers and daughters of LOL! http://twitpic.com/2kkz63
-Demi Moore, Actress (”Striptease,” “G.I. Jane”)

@eliroth The bad news is I got sick from 2 much drinking @ last night’s celebration. The good news is I can now say #LastExorcism made me puke.
-Eli Roth, Actor/Writer/Director (”Hostel,” “Inglourious Basterds”)

@jasonmatzner THE AMERICAN: beautifully photographed esp. use of mixed color temperatures, great Clooney screen presence, minimalist storyline
-Jason Matzner, Director (”Dreamland”)

@iamdiddy THERE HAS BEEN AN INTERVENTION!! Going to the gym!! No more cheeseburgers!! LOL
-Sean “Diddy” Combs, Actor/Musician (”Monster’s Ball,” “Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power”)

@johnaugust Ping is the new eWorld. #fivepeoplewillgetthis
-John August, Writer/Director (”Big Fish,” “The Nines”)

@pattonoswalt The mom from KARATE KID is Don Draper’s secretary, rendering my latest fan fiction obsolete.
-Patton Oswalt, Actor (”Ratatouille,” “Big Fan”)

@FINALLEVEL Been playin the new ‘Dead Rising 2 Download’ Super Dope!
-Ice-T, Actor (”New Jack City,” “Law and Order: SVU”)

@Jon_Favreau Just rode the Simpsons ride at lunch with @oliviawilde. They really have the motion base tech down. It was great.
-Jon Favreau, Actor/Writer/Director (”Iron Man,” “Elf”)

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