Results tagged “oliverstone”

We guess the Madoff movie has some competition! Oliver Stone is set to direct the sequel to his 1987 film, )is writing the script, but Newsweek spoke to the original film's screenwriter Stanley Wieser, who gave his two cents about the sequel— "I know it's back with Gecko coming out of jail. But he wouldn't be allowed to trade and I know that he would basically have to work using others. It's in a shark's blood to keep moving"—and believes, "If Gecko was around right now, he would find a way to buy into these government-owned toxic assets. Then, he would just pay for them at six cents on the dollar."

(directed by Quentin Tarantino)

The prolific journalist and author David Halberstam died yesterday in a car crash outside of San Francisco. Halberstam, a New Yorker, was traveling in a car that was broadsided while trying to make a left turn. Two other cars were involved in the crash, none of the drivers were seriously injured. The NY Times obituary notes that Halberstam "was killed doing what he had done his entire adult life: reporting," as he was on his way to interview a football player for an upcoming book.

February 10th and 17th, class is in session at the UCB Theater. Welcome to the Al Pacino School of Acting , where you learn from the master, portrayed by Cesar Gracia. Audience members will have the opportunity to pick up some of the tricks of the trade as Pacino calls them onstage and brings out the true auteur in them.

There is tons of speculation all over the Internet about the Oscar nominations for films released in 2006. As an Oscars fiend, we're not going to digress about the calculus of vote-splitting. Instead, we'll point out a couple things we noticed:

THEATER: Three time Obie winner and “titanic force” Mac Wellman has brought his Two September to The Flea Theater, which he co-founded a decade ago. The action takes place in various locations in China and Vietnam after the Japanese coup of March 9th, 1945. It is told through the eyes of blacklisted writer Josephine Herbst and the young Vietnamese revolutionary leader who becomes Ho Chi Minh. - John Del Signore

Oliver Stone may have already unleashed on moviegoers his melodramatic vision of 9/11 with but even if you don't want to see the wreckage recreated on screen, there's way more filling New York movie screens.

-- Some late breaking news: our sources at the Bronx Zoo are reporting a power outage. So if you're in the Bronx tonight, watch out-- bears get really ornery when they can't watch their evening television!

. She had this to say on Friday in her column (after offering the caveat that she's not a film critic): "It's lousy. Slow-moving and formulaic....New Yorkers infuse such pain and emotion into 9/11 that, for now, absolutely nothing could project onto a screen what still rips at our entrails. I hoped to speak about this with Oliver, who has always seemed a brilliant moviemaker, but his handlers are moving him around with a tweezer. Must be, like on that actual day itself, they, too, can smell death." Ouch!

Newsweek devotes its cover to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (star Nicolas Cage is on the cover, though, not Ollie), and there's a big, positive feature about the film. Time, which has a stem cell cover story, gives World Trade Center a positive review. What's interesting is how a lot of coverage notes that Oliver Stone seems to have kept his politics in check and, in turn, created a good film. Now, with positive sentiments from the right also pouring in, could World Trade Center be the feel good movie of an important election year?

Ah, there's nothing like politicians sinking their teeth into a national tragedy for their own gain. Someone on Gothamist Contribute pointed out something happening in the Ohio Senate race between Republican incumbent Mike DeWine and challenger, Representative Sherrod Brown. DeWine's campaign used a doctored photograph of the World Trade Center burning in a television ad that touted his national security platform. According to CNN, "The senator was notified Wednesday by a reporter at U.S. News & World Report that the image of the burning Twin Towers could not have depicted the actual event because the smoke was blowing the wrong way." Good grief. His campaign spokesman said, "The senator thought it depicted the actual events of 9/11 and when he found out that wasn't the case, he wanted an actual picture used." Hear that? If you're trying to exploit a tragedy, make sure you've got the real goods; DeWine had Rudy Giuliani at one of his events, so he really should have known better.

Car Alarms on summer nights from the Gothamist Contribute stream-- mails yours to photos (at) gothamist.

- And fancy that - kids can't pay attention when school's about to end; kids, wait until you've got a job and won't be able to pay attention then

A couple weeks ago, an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t! centered around the many fights at Ground Zero. The show criticized the slowness of bureaucracy (hello, PatakI) and the designs selected for Ground Zero, including the memorial. The show also filmed one of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's Family Rooms, where victims' families members can "observe the site in quiet contemplation." Well, this upset other victims' families who have besieged the LMDC with complaints. A firefighter's father wrote, "I am outraged that this sacred Family Room was violated in so despicable a manner and would like you to send my utter disgust to whoever was responsible." (It seems as though Anthony Gardiner of the WTC Family Advisory Council let them in.) Another family member who is on the LMDC added, "In addition to violating the protocols of no media in the Room, this incident was even more troubling because the name of this program is Showtime's Penn and Teller 'Bull----.'" Aside from any agreements that the Family Room would remain private and away from cameras, Gothamist wonders if the family members actually saw the show, because the show seemed to support many of the family members' claims (the designs are terrible, the process sucks, how are we going to remember loved ones, etc.).

- All the dialogue seems stilted and hokey - again, maybe not an issue with the movie itself, but in the trailer, it's like a lead weightMaybe the trailer will play well in parts not near NYC, but it really seems to trivialize what happened, to assign emotions to an event many people already have very strong emotions about. When Gothamist thinks about September 11, we don't have a sweeping soundtrack telling us to cry playing. We hope there's more naturalistic use of sound in the movie, because the trailer is telling us in big letters not to see it. Luckily, at the very end of the trailer, there is something that looks good: A cool shot of Cage and Pena under the rubble, and the camera pans up. Well, Paramount will have until August 11 to release another trailer.

The fifth annual Tribeca Film Festival will open on a somber note, with the first movie about September 11, Flight 93, as the opening night selection. The movie is about the flight from Newark that was hijacked with intentions to crash it into DC, but passengers overtook the terrorists and forced the plane to crash in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania instead. It's a little eerie to imagine seeing this film during an event created to boost the downtown economy after September 11, but that will probably make it more poignant and powerful (we have faith in director Paul Greengrass, who did an amazing job with Bloody Sunday about a clash between the Irish and British in 1972). Gothamist hopes there will be a panel or two about the film during the festival as well - it would be fascinating to hear what the films' cast and crew as well as festival organizers think about it.

There's an interesting story in the Times about Oliver Stone's September 11 movie that he's currently filming. We had noted previously that it was filming mostly in LA with some exterior work in NYC. Now, with shooting starting in LA, the production wants to pre-empt crazed blogosphere speculation by having the NY Times visit painstakingly recreated World Trade Center wreckage set, by placing photographs of the set in context. And it looks like the nightmare all over again - it's very spooky-looking. According to set designer Jan Roelfs, workers "hand-carved thousands of beams from Styrofoam, molded rubber into countless strands of stand-ins for shredded reinforcing bars, and assembled all of this inside a pit erected atop stacks of cargo containers." The set of the pit will be actual size, and part of the World Trade Center's concourse of stores was rebuilt as well ("complete with period handbags in the Coach storefront, clothing in the Banana Republic windows and shoes from Johnston & Murphy").

Call it sensitivity or call it fear: Olive Stone's much talked about September 11 movie, based on the rescue of two Port Authority officers, is shooting only a few scenes in New York, with most of the filming on Hollywood soundstages. The movie is based only on the accounts of Sergeant John McCouglin (to be played by Nicolas Cage -yes, that's why he's been sporting the 'stache) and Officer William Jimeno (played by Michael Pena), who were trapped under World Trade Center debris for 22 hours. Producer Michael Shamberg says, "We're not doing the `Towering Inferno-Titanic' version...we just felt after discussing it that frankly, it's easier to do it in Los Angeles." Yeah, like the September 11 miniseries was easier to film in Toronto. But the film is shooting until mid-November, with a tentative release date of August 11, just in time for the fifth anniversary. Director Paul Greengrass's film about Flight 93 (titled Flight 93), the flight that crashed in Pennsylvannia, may be released before the Stone movie, which means it'll be the summer of 9/11 - just in time for the midterm elections.

So it seems director Oliver Stone has begun on his untitled 9/11 film, which starts shooting in NYC sometime mid-October. Stone promises the film "will be a 'positive' story," focusing on two Port Authority cops -- one played by Nicholas Cage -- trapped under the rubble of the WTC, and not the politics sorrounding the event. On CNN Showbiz Tonight, Cage explained how the film intends to treat the story as responsibly and ethically as possible: "This is not an exploitive movie. This is not in any way an action film.It’s a true story based on fact... And it is very positive about the human condition, and that is what drew Oliver to it and it’s the kind of movie he does the best...I don’t even think you’re going to see the buildings in the movie actually."

It's New York magazine's 2005 Salary Survey, and the lesson is clearly: The city is full of rich people who are not you. In our highly unscientific early-morning survey of a few pages of the survey, it seems that well over half of the incomes are over $1 million. According to the U.S. Census, only 3% of New York City households have an income of over $250,000. Overlaying that with the number of households in the city, that's just over 90,000 households. Gothamist expects many people to be obsessing over this survey while at work today.

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