James Franco

Sean Penn’s Oscar-Possible Harvey Milk Puts Face to Gay Rights in ‘Milk’

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:03:22 -0700

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Just as Tom Hanks put a face to AIDS in 1993’s “Philadelphia,” Sean Penn has now put a face to gay rights as Harvey Milk in the new Gus Van Sant true-story film “Milk”.

While Penn’s Harvey Milk had the physical demeanor of a petite and gentle man, the fire inside the real-life activist for gay rights – and more broadly civil rights – was both his blessing and sometimes his poison. Milk found balancing personal relationships challenging amid his relentless quest to be the first gay politician in California.

Sean Penn stars as real-life gay rights icon Harvey Milk in director Gus Van Sant’s “Milk”.
Photo credit: Phil Bray

The film’s story takes place in the 1970s when those who were out of the closet were much less accepted than they are today. Milk found himself fighting not only the adversity to his political dream because it hadn’t been done before but also a powerful politician in his state as well as an omnipresent national force against gay rights.

But even more than gay rights, Milk’s life was devoted to the same tenants of newly elected U.S. president Barack Obama: change and hope.

Because of the political corollaries to Obama’s message for change today as well as the brouhaha in California now over gay marriage (and the potential to repeal the thousands who snuck in during the short period of time when the law allowed them), the timing for the release of the film today couldn’t be more prescient.

Alison Pill (left) and Emile Hirsch (right) star as real-life gay rights activists Anne Kronenberg and Cleve Jones (respectively) in director Gus Van Sant’s “Milk”.
Photo credit: Phil Bray

While we’ve seen Penn deliver Oscar-worthy roles before (he won for “Mystic River”) and he does again for Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting,” “Finding Forrester,” “Paranoid Park”), what assists in the power of his transformative character performance is the complement of a sea of other notable actors playing against type. We’re treated to an entirely new way to look at Emile Hirsch – whose character range is now light years away from 2007’s “Into the Wild” – and Diego Luna.

While in “Milk” he wore no dancing shoes from 2004’s “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,” Luna’s gay character as Milk’s real-life lover is both something we’ve never seen before from him but also something that’s most certainly not a stretch to see from him.

Josh Brolin – who for this critic took three times of screening 2007’s “No Country for Old Men” and then a brilliantly authentic performance in 2008’s “W.” as George W. Bush to be sold on him – was the one questionable link in this stalwart cast who could most loudly make you go “hmmm…”.

Diego Luna portrays Harvey Milk’s real-life lover Jack Lira in director Gus Van Sant’s “Milk”.
Photo credit: Phil Bray

Brolin’s inner conflict and heterosexual ways (despite an unusual homosexual inference from Milk) could leave you with the same mixed feelings about his performance that he clearly had in delivering his own character. While “Milk” currently stands out among director Gus Van Sant’s best film thus far, in his direction you certainly felt his ambition for honesty and authenticity.

But you also felt his sensitivity and even sometimes his restraint. His filmmaking felt like he’d show you just enough to do the story justice but not enough to go over the line and make you uncomfortable.

While a sign of interesting filmmaking is the willingness to make you uncomfortable, legendary filmmaking will do so with a purpose and a reason while leaving a meaningful and lasting impression. This isn’t a story to take lightly or a concept to be told delicately.

It’s a holocaust on inequality that’s demanding to be heard and absolved to break down even today’s barriers that still hold the gay man and woman back.

Make sure you stay for the credits. In a film that cast countless primary, supporting and background gay characters, you’ll be treated to the one and only credit of the entirely unknown actor Brian Yates Sharber as the “Gay Man”.

“Milk” stars Sean Penn as Harvey Milk along with Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco and Alison Pill. “Milk,” which is directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, opened in Chicago on Nov. 26, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

God’s Vajoojoo Tastes Like Semi-Glorious ‘Pineapple Express’ in Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen Stoner Film

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:01:00 -0600

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – If god had a vajoojoo, Judd Apatow and company think it’d taste something like smoking “Pineapple Express”. There’s no question “Pineapple Express” is ultimately a stoner film, but is it the ultimate stoner film of our decade?

Always the most difficult proposition in a comedy is maintaining its comedic pacing with consistency.

Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, standing) and Saul Silver (James Franco, being carried) are two lazy stoners running for their lives in “Pineapple Express”.
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

A comedy’s goal is to sidesplittingly laugh your socks off from start to finish (and even after the credits roll). So often, though, a semi-successful comedy will instead feel like a humorous rollercoaster replete with some ups and some downs due to the inability to maintain its “A”-game material in a consistent fashion.

“Pineapple Express” falls victim to the comedic consistency trap. While the story has its heart in the right place for a film that’s centered on reefer madness and the script successfully grows ever-more complex and ridiculous, the story needs to be sliced and diced.

For every two comedic lines that successfully land one falls short. While the film certainly has the beginnings of stoner-film greatness, it’s still sometimes stifled by lines that had the potential to be roundhouse knockouts and instead were crippled stumbles.

Saul Silver (James Franco, left), Red (Danny McBride, center) and Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, right) in “Pineapple Express”.
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

That said, everything successful about “Pineapple Express” comes in threes from its writing (Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) and its primary actors (Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride).

There’s a lot of talk about James Franco playing against type for this role. Based on his performance, though, this shouldn’t be viewed as Franco playing against type. This should be viewed as Franco having found his type. For Franco, all other roles pale in comparison.

Despite his excruciatingly untalented performances in box-office monoliths “Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2” and “Spider-Man 3,” Franco’s drug-dealing, always-high demeanor in “Pineapple Express” proves he indeed has acting chops that have been otherwise been hidden away. All he needed was a little Mary Jane to deliver him from acting evil.

Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, left) and Saul Silver (James Franco, right) are two lazy stoners in “Pineapple Express”.
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

Now a painfully atrocious “Pineapple Express” performance by Rosie Perez – who hasn’t delivered a noteworthy performance since 1992’s “White Men Can’t Jump” (or 2001’s “Riding in Cars with Boys,” but that’s really stretching things) – without a doubt is the trippy film’s biggest buzzkill.

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View our full, high-resolution “Pineapple Express” image gallery.

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More film reviews from critic Adam Fendelman.

Gary Cole (her partner in crime) delivers an equally frightful performance. Amber Heard – a name you’ve likely never heard of before – continues trying to make her way in Hollywood after being bolstered by various “hot” ratings from magazines including Jane and Maxim.

Heard plays Rogen’s much younger high school girlfriend who fits with him just as much as a Mormon fits married to a Jew. Though this film is marketed with the burgeoning star power of James Franco and Seth Rogen behind the powerful comedic name of writer and producer Judd Apatow, we are not to forget Danny McBride.

Whether you loved McBride or hated him in “The Foot Fist Way” (or have never even heard of that film), “Pineapple Express” isn’t just the duo its advertising may have made you believe. McBride is the necessary tripod of this trio. Rogen co-wrote the story along with Apatow and Evan Goldberg (who also wrote “Superbad” along with Rogen).

“Pineapple Express,” which is directed by David Gordon Green and is written by Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Evan Goldberg, stars Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Rosie Perez, Amber Heard, Gary Cole and Kevin Corrigan. The film opened everywhere on Aug. 6, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

Tobey Maguire ‘Black’ in Action in Venomously Conflicted ‘Spider-Man 3’

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 03 May 2007 03:08:43 -0600

CHICAGO – At the heart of every great film is a good conflict. In Spidey’s third advent, his heart is venomously conflicted and so is the film.

The film gets gargantuan props on its special effects. Of course, the entertaining visual acuity is expected and is no surprise.

Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) battles his inner demons in “Spider-Man 3”.
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Some 200 Imageworks animators and 1,000 action artists in total were used to trump the previous two in the technology department.

As for the story, though, there were more subplots meringued together than a single film can eat. With a twinge more fluff whipped in, this could have easily been “Spider-Man 4,” too. Hence, I’m:

con·flict·ed [kuh n-flik-tid] (adjective): full of conflicting impulses

It’s an optical joyride – weeee! – and a cerebral discombobulation – ayiyiyi. The film’s makers premeditated all 140 minutes – yes, you may check your watch a couple times as that is two hours and 20 minutes – exactly for that effect.

“There’s so much more going on in this movie: more characters and more plotlines,” said visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk in the film’s production notes. John Dykstra, who snagged an Oscar for his work as visual effects supervisor on “Spider-Man 2” in 2004, declined to work on the third film.

Tobey Maguire, who plays Spider-Man for the third time, concurs.

“When I read the script, I was really excited about the different direction we were going with Peter Parker and the other characters and storylines,” he said. “We are covering a lot of new ground here … while maintaining the continuity of the characters.”

In terms of its plot, less can sometimes be more and more can sometimes be too much. However, the film’s action sequences serve as its redeeming savior. Director Sam Raimi focused squarely on using people for stunt work when their bodies were humanly capable and computer graphics (CG) when they weren’t.

Director Sam Raimi (left) and Topher Grace (right) on the set of “Spider-Man 3”.
Photo courtesy of Merie W. Wallace
For example, a water scene with Sandman – a new DNA-fused sand character played by Thomas Haden Church of “Sideways” – required computers because stunts couldn’t stack up and synthesization was required.

“We had to put a CG Sandman in … because the velocity of the water is too great to have Church or a stuntman perform portions of the sequence,” Stokdyk said. “Water is a huge challenge for visual effects. Our goal here was to seamlessly integrate the elements for this sequence between practical and CG.”

To prepare himself for Sandman, Church pumped iron for 16 months to bolster his real-life form.

Because real sand proved to be so difficult to manipulate in certain scenes, ground corncob was sometimes used as a double. It weighs half what sand does and the cast and crew enjoyed munching on it. When real elements weren’t used, technology came to bat.

Stokdyk was charged with the two-year process of developing previously non-existent computer programs. Added producer Grant Curtis: “Stokdyk and his team created new technology to manipulate every piece of sand on [Sandman].”

He added: “Existing technology allowed management of thousands of particles at once, but to animate Sandman the way [Raimi] wanted, we would have to be able to render billions of particles. In the end, the new software they wrote required 10 man years to code.”

In a scene commonly splashed in the film’s trailers where Spidey pounds through Sandman’s chest, Baxter Humby – a congenital amputee boxer – doubled as Tobey Maguire for the take. He lent a hand in conveying the intended effect after being brought into the world devoid of his right one.

Sandman (left) takes on Spider-Man (right) in “Spider-Man 3”.
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures
After changing shape and manipulating himself to stand 10 or even 80 feet tall, forming giant sand fists, hammers or a mace and shifting into a sand tornado, you could imagine it’d be quite an unusual story development when Sandman decides to flutter his eyelashes and momentarily befriend Spider-Man.

Huh?

James Franco as New Goblin – the angst-laden green chap who should retire as an actor and model for a living – was armed with “contemporary but deadly practical” weapons like pumpkin bombs (Spidey “hates those things”) and a sky stick that’s more sleek and agile than his previous glider.

Costume designer James Acheson breathed verve into the character’s military look. He added: “[His] clothing reflects a cross between urban SWAT troops and kind of a black knight but with rather nasty attributes like blades that come out of his arm.”

By the way, never again should a film ever script a butler character – Franco’s, in this case – to imbue life-altering wisdom. Such sage words were ridiculously placed.

Spidey’s eternal love interest – again played by Kirsten Dunst – for the first time sang in this film and was again designed to look scrumptious. She colored her natural blonde hair red.

Kirsten Dunst stars as Mary Jane Watson. She died her blonde hair red.
Photo courtesy of Merie W. Wallace
Bryce Dallas Howard – who in the film was paid also to have the hots for Spidey – oppositely colored her natural red hair blonde.

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Gwen Stacy. She died her red hair blonde.
Photo courtesy of Merie W. Wallace
As for Maguire playing New York’s favorite superhero, chalk the creation of each suit up to 200 man hours. Filming required 40 of them. That’s 8,000 man hours in total just for the familiar red suit.

While Spidey was still red and celebrated by the city, one scene with about 600 latex “web” balloons had to be painted by hand with a Sharpie marker.

Though the concept of a black, incendiary Spidey is a sexy one, the symbiote’s introduction into the film is underdeveloped. A terribly random event whereby a stringy black substance plummets like a meteor from space happens in Spidey’s nearby vicinity without him noticing. It inconspicuously slithers on his moped.

At another nonsensical moment in the film when the story could just as easily have sent him into a bathroom to brush his teeth, the alien paraphernalia struggles to attach itself to Spidey’s body. “GQ” Maguire on steroids is born.

Tobey Maguire sells black Spidey in a special shoot.
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

“We wanted to explore the darker side of [Peter Parker’s] character,” producer Laura Ziskin said. “When his suit turns black, it enhances and emphasizes characteristics that are already in the host. In this case, it makes him stronger and quicker, but also more prideful and aggressive.”

When Spider-Man decides the power afforded by the blackness is the apple in the Garden of Eden he shouldn’t enjoy, it becomes Topher Grace’s obsession. Venom – another new character who Raimi at first kept clandestine and even said he hated – is thusly born. He’s bad, needs a spanking and enjoys it.

While at first Raimi frantically vetoed having Venom as a villain because he despised the character’s “lack of humanity,” Marvel producer Avi Arad convinced him otherwise. Grace left “That ‘70s Show” to appear as Venom.

“I had black goo poured all over me, wires attached to my face that people with fishing poles were pulling up and other people below me were pulling down,” Grace said. “When you see my character in pain, there wasn’t a whole lot of acting required.”

Venom’s short journey transitions from his initial transformation into a third and final stage where he’s fully developed. By the film’s conclusion, he’s entirely CG and sports a “menacing, unhinged jaw and full mouth of very sharp teeth”.

“Everything is alive on ‘comic-book Venom,’” Stokdyk said. “The challenge was to make a character that was monstrous, very detailed and very kinetic but not delicate.”

Venom replaced a character known as Vulture from early production. Another one known as Lizard was initially going to be the film’s main desperado.

With its gold-studded cast and flashy visuals, the film’s official $258 million budget catapults it to the top spot as the most expensive film ever made in U.S. dollars. This barrier breaks the 2005 “King Kong” record of $207 million.

In adjusted dollars, “Voyna i mir” back in 1968 takes the budget cake with $560 million.