In this morning’s roundup of movie news ‘n’ notes from around the web, “Tree of Life” gets a rating, Chris Rock gets served, and “Inception” gets ready for a backlash.
Patrick Goldstein asks a fairly reasonable question: given the largely rapturous (and occasionally overstated) reviews of “Inception” that ran in a variety of publications on Monday afternoon, can a backlash against Christopher Nolan's film be far off? In fact, might it not hit before the movie even opens? I suspect that the answer is yes: the second round of reviews will in all likelihood not be as unanimously positive as the first round … and if you want to call that a backlash, then one is probably coming soon. (I mean, I have no doubt that Armond White is salivating at the prospect of trashing the film.) But I’d also be surprised is the consensus doesn’t remain very, very positive. (The Big Picture)
Brad Brevet looks at the new MPAA ratings bulletin, and learns that Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” has been submitted to the ratings board and given a PG-13 for “some thematic material.” What he finds most interesting is that when the film was submitted, the paperwork listed Cottonwood Pictures, Inc., the production company, as the distributor, rather than Apparition. Given the company’s ongoing restructuring, he says, “there is no telling what this means for ‘The Tree of Life.’” What it likely means is that Apparition’s eight-person distribution staff is a casualty of the company’s restructuring, which has left it with only 12 employees; just because somebody else will actually handle the distribution (under the supervision of an Apparition consultant) doesn’t mean the film won’t remain an Apparition release. (Rope of Silicon)
“Some lawsuits are just better than others,” says Eriq Gardner. This one, he says, is a good one: a woman named Pamella Lawrence has sued Sony Pictures, Chris Rock and a host of others, claiming that the film “Death at a Funeral” (and the 2007 British comedy of which it is a remake) was actually based on some humiliating experiences recounted in her 1995 book entitled “Caught on Video … The Most Embarassing [sic] Moment de Funeral, July 11, 1994, Jamaican Volume 1.” Her “semi-coherent” complaint displays “rampant paranoia,” Gardner writes: “Lawrence goes beyond mere copyright infringement to assert breach of implied contract, unfair competition, interference with prospective economic advantage, tortious breach of confidence, deceit and fraud.” And she says the movie contains in-jokes specifically designed to humiliate her. Gardner, not surprisingly, does not appear to think she has much of a case. (THR, Esq.)
Peter Newman (“The Squid and the Whale”) explains what a movie producer does to Theo Panayides. His explanation: basically, producers do everything. And to help him do everything, he drinks 20 cups of coffee a day. (Cyprus Mail)
The Philadelphia Film Festival has a new artistic director and two new directors of programming. The first post, indieWIRE says, goes to Michael Lerman, formerly the festival’s director of programming. The latter two go to Tom Quinn and Ryan Werner; Quinn is a senior VP at Magnolia Pictures and Magnet Releasing, Werner a senior marketing VP at IFC Entertainment. All have worked on film festivals before. (indieWIRE)
