Looking at an online list of works of the late novelist and playwright Iran Levin, who died of natural causes earlier this week at the age of 78, I was surprised to note that the man had a surprisingly modest output of work. Levin wrote seven novels over a course of four decades and only a handful of plays, but if ever

there was an argument that consistent quality and not quantity should distinguish an oeuvre, then Levin’s body of work sets the standard.

 

Five of Levin’s seven fine novels made into movies—some outstanding, like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and the first version of The Stepford Wives (1975); some not that great, like Sliver (1993) and the second version of The Stepford Wives (2004); one that was forgettable (1991’s A Kiss Before Dying) and another one that was weird and wild and starred Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier (1978’s The Boys from Brazil).

 

Of his handful of plays, the most memorable was the deliciously twisted Deathtrap, which ran for some four years on Broadway from 1978 to 1982 , and yielded a not-bad movie directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.

 

For my own part, I’m big fan of Levin’s 1970 novel This Perfect Day, which I read in high school. A exemplary piece of pop fiction from the future-shock thriller days of Seventies sci-fi fiction (a la Logan’s Run, The Terminal Man and so on), This Perfect Day concerns a young man in a future world that’s essentially run by a computer, “Uni,” which keeps the population under control by keeping track of everyone’s location via electronic bracelet and enforcing the administering the injection of monthly drug to keep everyone sedate and selfless. It’s a fine book from the immediately calls to mind such classics as Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange—and it’s high time that it was adapted and turned into a movie! Is anyone out there listening?

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Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends (Warner, available now), a rich and well-mounted musical documentary focusing on the famed American singer, marks the latest collaboration between filmmakers Clint Eastwood and Bruce Ricker. The two have worked together for some 20 years, ever since Eastwood exec produced 1988’s Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser, which was produced by Ricker. Since then, Ricker has been a music consultant on such Eastwood films as The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic

River, while Eastwood has produced the Ricker-directed doc Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That and been the subject of an American Masters installment that Ricker also directed.

 

For The Music Never Ends, Eastwood and Ricker, president and founder of the venerable jazz home entertainment label Rhapsody Films (www.rhapsodyfilms.com), opted not to chronicle Bennett’s life and career in the manner of a straight-ahead bio-pic, but rather to fashion a not-necessarily-chronological look at Bennett’s musical heritage.

 

“What we wanted to do is show where Tony Bennett came from musically, which was two traditions,” Ricker told us. “First, he is the Italian-American bel canto type singer like Dean Martin or Sinatra, and then he’s the traditional American popular singer a la Louis Armstrong or Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.”

 

To that end, the film contains a healthy collection of films clips featuring Bennett’s contemporaries (along with the obvious vintage material of the singer, himself), including scenes from such Warner Bros. movies as High Society, Bells Are Ringing, Gold Diggers of 1935, An American in Paris, Easter Parade and even Goodfellas.”

 

“By using the songs from feature films, the production values of those films make it into our picture. And they subtly add another dash of elegance to the whole production,” said Ricker. “The type of vision that Clint has come up with creates a symbiotic relationship with Warner. We have access to their catalog and we can justify using clips from that catalog. And that puts a spotlight on their library, its availability and its quality.”

 

Ricker is also fast to point out that access to clips of a certain pedigree isn’t the only advantage to working with the legendary Mr. Eastwood.

 

“The beauty about working with Clint is that he has final cut and the power to let the music play on so that it can be enjoyed. Many of the songs in the film are shown in their entirety, albeit from different times and by different performers,” said Ricker. “Also, people like Mel Brooks, Don Rickles and Alec Baldwin and others who appeared in the film did interviews within a day or two of getting calls from us, and that was because of Clint.”

 

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Produced in 1989 and originally exhibited at animation and shorts festivals before in went on to a renewed life in theaters preceding Finding Nemo in 2003, Knick Knack, the computer-animated Pixar short film directed by John Lasseter. I was psyched to hear that it was going to be a segment in the just-released Disney DVD Pixar Short Films Collection: Vol.1 as I missed it when I saw Finding Nemo in the theater (okay, I walked in a little late!) and I don’t own the Nemo disc.

 

It’s a cute little short about a snowman in a souvenir snow globe who yearns to break out of his crystalline prison to reach the “Sunny Miami” tchochke on the other side of the shelf. Adorning the Miami knick knack, you see, is

a voluptuous, bikini-clad babe who appears to be giving him the big eye!

Yeah, it was the cute little short I’d remembered seeing all those years ago at some New York festival, but my smile soured a bit when I discovered that it was NOT the original Knick Knack from the pre-Nemo days. In the version on the Pixar Shorts disc, the Miami beach babe appears to have a received a radical breast reduction – and I mean radical along the lines of nary a bustline to be seen! Now, I’m not saying that I need to have my animated female characters to maintain a certain level of bustiness (except for Jessica Rabbit—if anyone messes with those legendarily formidable curves, then I’m outta here!), but I don’t understand why the short included in the new disc can’t be the original one. The blogosphere is theorizing, probably correctly, that the re-rendering was probably administered to make the short more family friendly.

 

Could it have been a mandate from parent company Disney so that their core family audience's feathers wouldn't get ruffled? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of busty lovelies in Miami! And there are more of the same in Hollywood, aren’t there? Come to think of it, don't lots and lots of women have breasts?

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Director John Dahl’s latest film, You Kill Me, starring Ben Kingsley , Tea Leoni and Luke Wilson, is a bit of departure of sorts from the neo-noirs--Kill Me Again, Red Rock West and The Last Seduction--that helped forge his career back in the Nineties. It’s got its share of murder, yes, but this time it revolves around a

boozing, flailing hitman (Kingsley) who moonlights at a funeral home and the go-for-broke woman (Leoni) who meets him and gets him back on his murderous track.

 

“You Kill Me is great and was great fun to make--it’s a small kind of quirky black comedy,” Dahl told us in a recent interview. “It had a budget of about $4 million, and when you’re doing a movie on that kind of budget—and with a shooting schedule of about a month—you’re there because you want to be there.”

 

Dahl pointed out that it didn’t hurt that Leoni and Kingsley were both co-executive producers of the film.

 

“They’re helping you make the movie by just being there,” he said. They know what we’re dealing with and what we can afford and what we can’t. Producing and starring in You Kill Me, it connects them directly to the film, more so than if they were employees of the studio. Sir Ben, he never complained and he sat on the set all day. It was the same thing with Tea. She wanted to get as involved as possible so she could protect the movie.”

 

At the mention of ‘Sir Ben,” I had to ask Dahl about the buzz that everyone’s heard about Kingsley concerning his wish that everyone refer to him by the title he received when he was knighted in 2001.  

 

“Oh, he likes to be called 'Sir Ben,' absolutely,” Dahl said. “I think for Americans, it’s kind of weird to call anyone ‘sir.’  I didn’t mind calling him that, particularly as he was so fine in the film!”

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Afterburner Films CEO Dave Riggs is readying to produce a DVD Premiere movie about the world of jet fighters that will be filmed entirely in 3-D. Teaming with Riggs on the project is Mehran Salamanti, the aerial photographer and Oscar-nominated inventor of the Hotgears Camera System. The movie, Need for Speed,

concerns to daredevils who perform aeronautic stunts to win the affections of a woman they are both pursuing. Riggs will perform the aerial stunts. The film is slated to start production in early 2008 and, according to Riggs, is only made possible by the recent advancements in digital HD camera systems and 3-D technology.

“The stuff just looks spectacular,” Riggs told us. “We initially thought about the IMAX documentary thing for the 3-D aerial photography, but rather than go that route, we decided to pursue the more commercial avenue for it.”

 

Riggs also informed us that he is in talks with Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys fame to star in Need for Speed. Carter had a starring role in Afterburner’s Fast Glass, which debuted at AFM this week. Additionally, Riggs has signed writers Randy Vampotic and Mike Sorrentino to write the screenplay for “The Need for Speed.” The pair previously scripted the 2002 film I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

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Warner's latest Stanley Kubrick DVD collection (the third one from the studio in under a decade), Stanley Kubrick: Warner Home Video Directors Series, was released last week and I've been working my way

through the set's fine complement of supplements. Each of the five films--2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut--are accessorized with a nice bunch of extras, the majority of them created by veteran DVD producer Gary Leva. The slew of commentaries and featurettes are highlighted by a cavalcade of Kubrick performers, including Clockwork Orange's Malcom McDowell, 2001's Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket and Sidney Pollack from Eyes Wide Shut. They're all enthusiastic and thoughtful as they discuss their experiences with the Kubrick, as are the filmmaker’s frequent producer Jan Harlan and his widow Christiane Kubrick.

 

For my money (alright, I got a free press copy!), the best supplemental moment comes from Vincent D'Onofrio, who portrayed Full Metal Jacket's unforgettable Marine-made killing machine Leonard "Gomer Pyle"

Lawrence. D'Onofrio talks about Kubrick's directing style and his obsession to detail, yes, but he's also proud to declare that Kubrick and Full Metal Jacket served as his sole professional launching pad.

 

"Stanley made my career--there's no question about that. I've done over 50 films because of him--because of that part, because Stanley cast me,” says D’Onofrio. There is no other reason why I'm working."

 

Call me sentimental, but I gravitate to earnest proclamations like that one. It sorta reminds me of what Treat Williams said a few months back on a featurette regarding his experiences on Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City.

 

“Sitting here 25 years later talking about the DVD is one of the most exciting things I could imagine this year,” he said. “It makes my day—it makes my year.”

 

Some filmmaker with low self-esteem (are there any of those out there?) oughta snap these two guys up, crank out an indie, and sit back and suck up some praise when the DVD supplemental package is produced!

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As is often the case on DVD release press junket, the big guns who came out to promotee a film when it was released theatrically are suddenly “unavailable” when it comes time to do the DVD publicity several months later. Such was the case for Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth entry in the venerable Die Hard series, which Fox will issue on disc on Nov. 20. Bruce Willis didn’t make it to the early November promotional gathering at New York’s Ritz Carlton Hotel, nor did director Len Wiseman (who may have been busy preparing the third installment in his vampires vs. werewolves epic Underworld), but in their place, the DVD press got a chance to spend a few minutes with Live Free or Die Hard co-stars Maggie Q and Justin Long!

The pair, it seems, have grown quite close and appear to enjoy promoting the film together, having traveled the world for the theatrical publicity this past summer, and now the hoping around the U.S. for the DVD release.

Several movie-themed message boards and blogs are linking the two together romantically, but I don’t think that’s the case—the two young stars just really, really like each other’s company.

 

Sitting around a junket table with other journalists and their microcassette recorders, Maggie and Justin joined us and began joking, giggling, smirking and relating cutesy stories as they spoke over each other and created havoc for writers who have to decipher the mess when we play it back! Sifting through the audio detritus, I found that the most memorable thoughts to emerge from the session didn’t concern the film, but other, funnier subjects. Here’s a couple of such moment from the two, who may very well be planning to bring the “Maggie & Justin Show” on the road:

 

Let’s starting with Maggie, relating tales of her Asian fanbase:

 

“I received an email from a sweet girl who runs my fan club in Asia, and she told me how everyone in Asia hates me because I’ve forgot where I’m from and that I only speak English now. I’m not even from Asia—I’m from the U.S. and English is my first language!! I had to learn Chinese for all the movies I did in China!!”

 

And then there’s Justin, speaking of his early roles in the Jeepers Creepers series:

 

“The Jeepers Creepers movies are so cultish, it’s out of control. I could do, like Gone with the Wind with Cate Blanchett, and it would piss off fans of those movies because they thing I should only being doing horror movies. I get a lot of ‘When are they gonna make Part Three?’ questions from those people all the time. Meanwhile, I’m in a video store the other day with Maggie and I see that Jeepers Creepers, the first one and the second one, are offered in a combo-pack for, like, $5.99! I mean, does that mean that they’re classics?!?”

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Speaking to filmmaker Werner Herzog, not surprisingly, is a little like viewing one of his films: Obsessions are revealed, mythologies are grafted onto realities and the truth comes out. But what specific parts are true—and just how accurate are these true parts--now, there’s the mystery. Such was the feeling I had after wrapping up a phone interview I had with legendary director of Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man concerning his prodigious output and his latest feature, Rescue Dawn, which Fox will release on DVD on Nov. 20.

 

VB: Rescue Dawn concerns U.S. fighter pilots struggling to survive in the jungles of Laos after being shot during the Vietnam War. And it appears to have a substantial budget.

HERZOG: Not really. What I’m doing in Rescue Dawn, like I did in Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, is that I’m putting a huge film on the screen for a very small budget. For way under ten million dollars, I’m putting out a film that looks like sixty or seventy million dollars on the screen. It’s going to be a big film.

VB: The film was primarily shot in Thailand. Did the actors endure the kind of shoots that the casts of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo had to go through when they were in the Amazon?

HERZOG: No, but it is a very physical film. The actors did everything themselves without stunt men. As I watched them plowing through the jungle, I sat back in amazement and wondered how they would get through it. The film has the very physical presence of the jungle.

VB: You’ve made four films back to back over the past two years--are you prepping any after this one?

HERZOG: I have four films lining up right now. My problem is always that I can’t produce quickly enough—whenever I finish one film, three or four new films are lining up.

VB: That’s keeping busy! It seems like you’re always leaning forward to your next project.

HERZOG: Yes, but I’m leaning forward because I’m being pushed from behind.

 

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Tomorrow, Sony will issue Hostel: The Director’s Cut and Hostel: Part II in the Blu-ray format, which is sure to excite gorehounds who want to see crystal-clear images of the severed digits and mutilated eyeballs that

the films have to offer. Just as happy about the imminent release—maybe even a little happier—is their director, Eli Roth.

 

“It’s so satisfying as a filmmaker to see your work displayed in a high definition format,” Roth told us in a recent telephone interview. “More and more people are watching their films in high-def, and I’m a filmmaker who puts a lot of thought into the color and sound design of my movies. So I’m really happy about this.

 

With Hostel: The Director’s Cut and Hostel: Part II both being released on Blu-ray, Cabin Fever, Roth’s 2003 directorial debut, is the only one of his three feature film efforts that is not available in a high-def format. And though Roth says that Cabin Fever’s high-definition-ization is inevitable, that’s not the most important item on the agenda concerning the film.

 

“Lionsgate promised me a director’s cut DVD of Cabin Fever and I’m holding then to that,” he said. “I would definitely love to do a definitive version--I want my original cut to get out there.”

 

 

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One of the founding members of the British art rock group Supertramp in 1970, keyboardist/ guitarist/vocalist Roger Hodgson co-wrote the majority of the band’s songs along with fellow co-founder Rick Davies. The majority of the Supertramp catalog is credited to both men (sorta like Lennon and McCartney, you might say), but Hodgson is the main writer of such hits as "The Logical Song", "Dreamer", "Give A Little Bit", "Breakfast in America" and "Take the Long Way Home." Hodgson left the band in 1983

and took a loooooonngggg break from performing his Supertramp hits. But with the release of EagleVision's Roger Hodgson: Take the Long Way Home - Live in Montreal last month, the break is over as the 2006 show contains all of the above Hodgson Supertramp hits as well as some lesser known tracks and solo efforts.

 

“When I left Supertramp, I felt that the its had run its course at that time--the unity had kind of evaporated,” Hodgson told us in an interview last month. “And I had two small children and my heart was calling me on how to be a parent. Now, I didn’t want to be one of those guys who looked back and regretted not being around.”

 

When Hodgson returned to touring in 2005, playing both his solo material and songs from his Supertramp days, he was thrilled to receive a positive response from concertgoers.

 

“When I got back, I was having so much fun with audiences and the songs appeared to stand the test of time,” he said. “I’m enjoying the songs more now than I did originally. And the greatest testament is that I can watch it.”

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Having to cut Troy into a shorter, PG-13 version for theaters, due to studio demands, Wolfgang Petersen said he now feels "satisfied" after making his director's cut, which was released on DVD a few weeks ago. But the director of The Perfect Storm, Air Force One and Das Boot said he learned an important lesson with Troy: "I've learned a lot here. Next time there will be a big fight."

Chatting with reporters about the new Troy DVD, Petersen expressed his dislike of the studio demands that were made on the film under the pressures of the film's looming theatrical release—and he said all this while relaxing in Warner's screening room. Of course, that was after Warner spent more than $1 million on the director's cut, which was completely recut, additional scenes processed and music reedited.

"In the case of Troy, I knew there was a much better movie there and I was really asking Warner, begging to do it," he said.

And he's happy with the result: "The film is done with much more confidence than when we had the pressure of the summer release."

The new cut is 3 hours and 15 minutes, but Petersen said it feels shorter than the original because the story works much better. Among some highlights: Peter O'Toole's character's backstory with Hector being sick as a child; opening with a dog searching for his now-dead soldier master (which was in the original script); different feel to the music in many scenes including the pivotal Hector/Achilles battle (which we learned is actually a Danny Elfman sequence he wrote for Planet of the Apes).

The director's cut of Troy is "the way I really wanted it. It is rare to be able to say that," Petersen said.

He also touted the benefits of digital visual effects, which he loves: "You can even give actors a Botox job and no one will know. Did I do it? I will never tell."

What's he working on now? He's looking for a story about America coming together throughout history and developing three sci-fi films: The Graze, Uprising and Ender's Game (from the brilliant Orson Scott Card book, which has been floating around studios for years, much to the impatience of fans. Maybe this will be the time.).

What's Petersen's take on the high-def format war? Well, he has an HD DVD player, but no Blu-ray. Asked if he'll eventually get a Blu-ray, he replied: "Soon. I have to find a little room. I have a lot of machines there." Don't we all.

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Steve McQueen jumping his ’62 Triumph motorcycle over a 12-foot-high Nazi barbed-wire barrier in 1963’s The Great Escape remains the coolest motorcycle stunt ever committed to film and a singular moment that helped elevate the actor to superstar status.The thing is that it wasn’t McQueen making the 65-foot jump—it was legendary motorcyclist, stunt driver and McQueen buddy Bud Ekins. Ekins dies last Saturday at.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 77.

 

If you’re think back to some of the cinema’s most memorable bike and car stunts from the late Sixties and Seventies, there’s a good chance that Ekins was involved with them. The car chase in Bullitt (1968), the desert moon buggy pursuit in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the Mephistophelean road games in Race with the Devil (1974), hell, even D-Day riding his hog up the fraternity stairs in Animal House (1978)—all were the result of the devil-may-care deeds of Bud Ekins.

 

But it’s the motorcycle chase across the rolling German hills in The Great Escape that will forever remain Ekin’s most iconic image. He spoke about the stunt in a 1998 interview with Cycle News Magazine, reminding everyone that “I made it on the first pass” and that he was paid $1,000 for his little bit of razzle-dazzle, which was “huge money back in those days.” And when asked about the landing, Ekins simply replied, “Hard.”

 

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