Thursday, January 28th, 2010

The company behind such great films as Clerks., Pulp Fiction, Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Piano, Reservoir Dogs, Exotica, Shakespeare in Love, Velvet Goldmine, Dogma, Jackie Brown, the English dub of Princess Mononoke, Amelie, Apocalypse Now Redux, Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, the Kill Bill films, Finding Neverland, The Aviator, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood among many other things is calling it quits. Founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the company was pretty much the face of the independent film surge in the 90's and ventured on to be attached, sometimes with other companies as in There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men with Paramount Vantage, to some of the better reviewed films of the 2000s. Along with the end of a legend in modern cinema goes a few unproduced films, via Cinematical. The best of which being Julie Taymor's adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was set to star Helen Mirren, Geoffrey Rush, Alfred Molina, Russell Brand and Jeremy Irons among others. Ironically enough, Deadline Hollywood had ran a story early this morning before The Walt Disney Company (the current owners of Miramax, which was bought from the Weinsteins) announced the closing of the studio that Harvey Weinstein was interested in buying the company back. I'm sure Kevin Smith's Twitter feed is all aflutter, so expect some of his, as well as Quentin Tarantino's, comments about this over the weekend.

It wasn't just Miramax, today was a sad day for the entertainment industry as a whole. Zelda Rubinstein, most famous for playing the role of Tangina Barrons in the Poltergeist horror franchise, which also won the actress a Saturn Award, died of kidney and lung failure at the age of 77 today. Although she will forever be known for her role in Poltergeist, Rubinstein kept acting and appeared as late as Richard Kelly's 2006 film Southland Tales. Joining her was author J.D. Salinger. Of course, Salinger didn't have a lot to do with film, as his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, has been rumored to be in the process of an adaptation since the 50's, with everybody from Elia Kazan to Terrence Malick vying for the director's chair. Now that Salinger has finally passed, at the age of 91, one can't imagine that one of the most controversial books in American history, that I for some reason have never picked up, will make its way to the big screen in the coming years for better or worse.

Somehow, in the last 20 or so posts, I have yet to escape without mentioning Avatar. Nonetheless, I have to pass along a great story that I originally read on BBC News today. Officials in Zhangjiajie, China have renamed the Southern Sky Column the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain, claiming that the location was James Cameron's inspiration for the floating mountain in his blockbuster. It actually doesn't stop there, Zhangjiajie will also be conducting "Avatar Tours" to tourists to show all the places that inspired the land of Pandora. I have yet to hear Cameron acknowledge this place, but if I ever visit China, the place does look truly beautiful.

On a final note for the day, I have yet to really speak of the Sundance Film Festival, because as a spectator, what can one say about mostly independent films that we know nothing about. We just salivate a few of the reviews and wait for their limited theatrical release to jump aboard the bandwagon. Anyhow, Screen Daily grabbed an interview with Sundance regular Gaspar Noe, director of the controversial rape/revenge flick Irreversible, about future projects. One, Noe plans to make his first 3-D film, a joyous, hardcore, erotica piece. Noe's exploitative filmmaking does make a decent match for the medium, bringing it back into the subgenre it belongs.