Sandy Climan Movies
- 2007
- G
Hollywood A-list director Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies, Arlington Road) and newcomer Catherine Owens team up to break new cinematic ground by co-helming U2 3D -- the first three-dimensional concert film in movie history. The effort intercuts footage culled from several U2 shows on their 2005-2006 Vertigo tour in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Argentina, with Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. performing before rapt audiences. The picture opens with several thematically light rock songs, such as "Beautiful Day" and "Vertigo," but soon segues into more politically conscious material at the hands of social-change advocate Bono and his bandmates, such as the numbers "Bullet the Blue Sky," "Love and Peace or Else," and "Sunday Bloody Sunday"; at one critical point, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is projected high above the audience. Pellington, Owens, and cinematographers Tom Krueger and Peter Anderson make frequent use of a roving camera and multi-layered 3-D effects; they also step away from the approach utilized in the band's previous concert film U2: Rattle and Hum by omitting interviews and focusing exclusively on concert footage. The full version of U2 3D runs 80 minutes; a 56-minute "preview" version ran out of competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Martin Scorsese directed this fast-moving, epic-scale biopic documenting the life and loves one of the most colorful Americans of the 20th century, Howard Hughes. The Aviator follows Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as the twentysomething millionaire, having already made a fortune improving the design of oil-drilling bits, comes to Hollywood with an interest in getting into the picture business. It doesn't take long for Hughes, with his passion for airplanes, to jump from producer to director of his first major film project, a World War I air epic called Hell's Angels, which took three years to complete thanks to the shift from silent to sound filming and Hughes' relentless perfectionism. However, the film was a massive hit, and the eccentric inventor became a mogul in Hollywood, making Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani) a star and enjoying a romance with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). But Hollywood's old-boy network never fully accepted Hughes, and in time his passion for flying began to reclaim his attentions as he began designing new planes, setting air speed records, flying around the world, and risking his life testing aircraft. Hughes also found time to romance Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) and founded his own airline, Trans-World Airlines, though as his ideas became bolder, his approach became more eccentric, and he gained many powerful enemies, including the head of Pan-American Airlines, Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), and Senator Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda), who attempted to prove that Hughes' radical design ideas were actually part of an effort to bilk taxpayers for millions of dollars through government contracts. The Aviator's star-studded cast also includes John C. Reilly, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, and Frances Conroy. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, (more)
- 2002
Michael Mann of Miami Vice fame was the principle guiding force behind the CBS cop drama Robbery Homicide Division. In a major casting coup, Mann managed to sign the extremely "hot" film star Tom Sizemore for the lead role of Sam Cole, a hard-nosed LAPD robbery-homicide investigator. As head of a crack team of gumshoes, the obsessive, relentless Cole solved all manner of baffling urban crimes. Lensed on high-definition film and possessed of the "cutting-edge" style which typified the Michael Mann ouevre, Robbery Homicide Division first aired on September 27, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Sizemore, Barry "Shabaka" Henley, (more)
