Hey folks, Harry here with the dear Mr Capone reporting from the Cruise Ship that Ebert took over for his own mini-version of the FLOATING FILM FESTIVAL (ie the best Film Festival on a Cruise Ship anywhere!!!) Frankly, having spent days on a cruise ship with Roger before I can tell you... It is great. If you ever find yourself with the extra moola to join Roger on one of his Cruise fests or the great FLOATING FILM FESTIVAL I can't recommend it enough! Now, here's Capone who happened to have the hold of the ship stocked with Canadian Whiskey in a real roundabout smuggling operation. Here ya go....

Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here, still a bit wobbly after my four-day excursion on a Disney cruise liner as a part of Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper’s Film Festival at Sea, or as I like to call it “Sundance Jr.” since 4 of the 5 film selections this year were introduced to the world at last month’s Sundance Film Festival.

I’ll confess something here: if there is any one person, living or dead, who I consider a role model for my professional life (or at least the professional life I’d like to have), it’s Roger Ebert. Since I was old enough to change the channel on my family’s 13-inch television, I was watching Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel review movies together. I remember the WTTW Channel 11 logo before each show when they were on PBS together, and I continued to follow them through one syndicated show after another until they landed with the Buena Vista Television people. I loved the genuine tension the two generated as their off-camera, rival-newspaper competitiveness bled onto the screen each week. Even when the agreed that a film was good or bad, they’d find reasons to disagree about why it was. This is my long-winded way of saying that Roger Ebert has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and he and Gene inspired me to see as many films as I could, think about them in new ways, and attempt to put a few of my thoughts down on paper or up on my computer screen.

Over the last few years, I’ve certainly seen Roger many times at screenings in Chicago, although it really wasn’t until recently that I’ve started talking to him. This wasn’t an issue of gathering up my nerve or anything like that; I just kind of liked doing my thing and getting into screenings I wasn’t supposed to and not calling too much attention to myself. Capone’s true identity must remain a secret. But for no particular reason at a HEARTS IN ATLANTIS screening last September, Roger was just sitting there all by his lonesome, so I went up and introduced myself. He said a lot of nice things about the Ain’t It Cool family and my work (I doubt he actually remembered any specific thing that I’d written, but it was a nice gesture and I appreciated it).

Flash forward a couple of months. The Ebert & Roeper show has started to promote the 2nd Film Festival at Sea aboard the Disney Wonder cruise liner. A friend of mine (who I’ll refer to as Gotti) had gone the previous year (when IN THE BEDROOM, THE CLAIM, and THE DISH were screened) and had a great time. For some reason, I was dying to go this year and I’m so glad I did. Not only did we screen two more films than last year the mood was more celebratory. Less than a week before we boarded the ship, Roger had gone under the knife to remove a cancerous growth on his thyroid gland. The way I heard the story, he went in for the procedure on a Friday, was released on Sunday, was back in a screening room Monday, and flew down to Florida a day or two after that. He was in great shape, his voice was strong, he was happy to see and talk to everyone, and other than an oversized bandage on the side of his neck, he looked like the Roger we know and love to disagree with.

I’d guess that there were about 250 people as part of our "movie group." There was a Thursday pre-dinner cocktail reception, where I reintroduced myself to Roger (we had a brief conversation about Moriarty attending his Overlooked Film Festival and a few other things) and met Richard Roeper for the first time. Before I go into the movie we viewed, I should say that during almost every Q&A session after each screening, Ain’t It Cool, Harry Knowles, and even Butt-Numb-a-Thon were mentioned at some point, usually by Roger and never having anything to do with me or question/comments that I had. The subject of the internet’s influence on movie making came up repeatedly, but it wasn’t until the last night on the ship that the tables were turned on yours truly. More on that in a minute. Here are the films we saw:

ONE HOUR PHOTO

Holy crap, what an opener! Director Mark Romanek has crafted one of the creepiest films I’ve ever seen. And no one else could have played Seymour "Sy" Parrish but Robin Williams. The role is all the more effective and devastating because it’s Williams, an actor who we’ve seen do nothing lately by sappy sentimental films that he could take his children to. No more.

I felt dirty (the good kind of dirty) watching this movie on a Disney ship. Sy is the head of a one-hour photo section of a Wal-Mart-like department store. Through the photos he’s developed, he formed an unhealthy attachment to one family in particular, the Yorkins, with husband Michael Vartan (NEVER BEEN KISSED and T.V.’s "Alias"), wife Connie Nielsen (GLADIATOR), and young son Dylan Smith. In fact, Sy has plastered an entire wall of his home with hundreds of pictures of the family taken over the years, and when he discovers that Michael has not been faithful to his wife, he takes matters into his own hands.

Romanek lays on the symbolism pretty thick but always in just the right way. His camera work and use of color here is extraordinary, and Williams has never put forth such a memorable performance. He’s not using any of the usual techniques that any less capable actor would use to make us nervous about a character who is obviously a time bomb. Gary Cole (playing a variation of his role in OFFICE SPACE) is also on hand as Sy’s ever-watchful boss, as is Eriq LaSalle as a detective investigating a crime that Sy has committed. Since most of the film is told in flashback, we don’t know exactly how horrible Sy’s actions are until the very end. Sy’s level of perfection in both his work and in the way to watches over the Yorkin family is both touching and frightening.

ONE HOUR PHOTO is clearly Williams’ next shot an an Oscar, and boy is he good. And he’s nearly unrecognizable as a man who probably looks a lot older than he is. People will inevitably compare this to PSYCHO, and that would be unfair. Other than a slightly chatty third act, there are few similarities. ONE HOUR PHOTO will make you look a lot closer at the people you come into contact with in your day-to-day life but pay little attention to. Hey, did that grocery store clerk hold his glance a little too long? Maybe.

MONSTERS INC.

I smelled the Disney influence when I saw that this film was on the schedule. MONSTERS INC. is a good movie, and I was particularly excited to see a print of this film with the "outtakes" and "theatre production" tacked on to the end (if you saw the film early in its run, you probably didn’t see these; they are tremendous). But the real reason for the screening of an already-released film was that director Peter Docter was aboard the ship and did a great Q&A after the film.

He brought along with him a great video tape, which he narrated, that showed the process by which the characters were assembled, including great animated sketches, early test workings of the various character designs, storyboards, a demonstration of how they placed the 1.2 million hairs on the Sulley character, recording the voices, etc. I’m assuming most of this stuff will be on the DVD, but it explained the process of creating such an imaginative film from nothing better than I’ve ever seen it done.

I ran into Docter the day after his presentation, and we talked a bit about the future of Pixar (not about their recent legal troubles, however). He even remembered that I did what he believed to be the first review of the finished MONSTERS INC. at a Chicago-area Disney trade screening and being amazed that a spy had gotten in.

Naturally, he was also very excited about Pixar’s Summer 2003 released FINDING NEMO, but what he really wanted to talk about was Brad (IRON GIANT) Bird’s as-yet-untitled project. We spent a lot of time talking about the failure of IRON GIANT to make a dent at the box office, and he indicated to me that if Disney had owned that film, they would have given it the four-star marketing treatment instead of burying it like Warner Bros. did. Docter is the friendliest guy in the world, and it was a lot of fun talking to him.

STOLEN SUMMER

I was really hoping that the film would be featured as part of this festival. I watched with a religious conviction the "Project Greenlight" series on HBO. My stomach would regularly ball up into knots with each episode as I waited to see who producer Chris Moore would yell at next, to see how drunk Ben Affleck was in early, pre-rehab episodes, to see how devious and backstabbing everyone was, including newbie writer-director Pete Jones.

For fans of the T.V. show, the movie will let you down; there’s really no way it couldn’t. The drama of "Project Greenlight" was real and exciting. The drama in STOLEN SUMMER is canned and uninspired. Would people who never saw the television show like the film better? I don’t think so. The child actors are pretty bad (and make you appreciate Haley Joel Osmont) and their dialogue doesn’t elevate them in any way. What actually worked for me were the family scenes, especially the O’Malley family headed by Aidan Quinn and Bonnie Hunt. Also, there are some terrific scenes between Quinn and Eddie Kaye Thomas (Finch from the AMERICAN PIE films) as the oldest O’Malley child who wants to go to college but whose father won’t take charity to make that happen. Also good is Kevin Pollak as Rabbi Jacobsen, whose son firefighter Quinn saves early in the film.

The problem with STOLEN SUMMER is the the "quest" young Pete O’Malley sets himself out on to convert Jewish people to Catholics so they won’t go to hell isn’t funny, cute, or compelling. And having seen the documentary, you know how much is missing. There are at least three major scenes covered substantially in "Project Greenlight" that never make the film, and some of them are key moments that answer a lot of confusing points. And the whole film just feels rushed with very little time to linger and get to know characters. This was the film I was most anticipated about seeing at this festival and least excited by after having seen it.

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE

Based on his best-selling autobiography (and on his legendary audio version of that book), THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE documents the career of leading man turned notorious producer, studio head, and ladies man Robert Evans, who also narrates this film. And its his narration that makes this film.

The film opens with a red velvet curtain opening to reveal a quote from Evans saying that there are three sides to every story: your version, his version, and the facts; and all three are true. And that exactly captures how I feel about this wonderful look at Hollywood in the glory days of the late 1960s through the early ‘80s. I believed every word of what Evans said, while taking none of it literally. His recites his version of the story as if reading a trashy novel about Hollywood.

This is the BOOGIE NIGHTS of behind-the-scenes of Hollywood documentaries, complete with a funky soundtrack and all the sex and drugs you can stomach. Evans slept with every major starlet, model, and then some; he had a hand in the making of THE GODFATHER; ROSEMARY’S BABY; CHINATOWN; MARATHON MAN (in fact, it’s pretty obvious that Dustin Hoffman based his character in WAG THE DOG on Evans, complete with the oversized glasses); and BLACK SUNDAY, as well as disasters like THE COTTON CLUB and POPEYE. He was married to Ali MacGraw for several year until Steve McQueen stole her away while the two were making THE GETAWAY. He’s not particularly polite toward MacGraw for doing this, but in a strange way he understood the appeal that the number one box office attraction in the world at the time would have to any woman.

If you believe Evans stories, he made Coppola extend his two-hour-plus cut of THE GODFATHER to three hours; he single-handedly broke up marriage of Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra; and he made CHINATOWN despite the fact that almost no one connected with the film understood Robert Towne’s script.

Roger Ebert told us the Evans is his own best character, and this film proves that. Even the style of the documentary is original using hundreds of black-and-white stills (along with film clips, obviously) and digitizing them to manipulate the images. The result is an almost three-dimensional treatment of the images that is hard to explain but really beefs up the other worldly feel of the subject matter. THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE will go down in my mind as one of the classic films about Hollywood from a man who has seen the best and worst in his life played out on this very public stage.

REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES

Winner of both the Audience Award at Sundance, as well as a special jury prize for its two lead actresses (America Ferrera as Ana and veteran Lupe Ontiveros as her mother Carmen), REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES is a celebration of being who you are. Despite the title, this is not a film about overweight women loving themselves.

This is a film about a girl who has just graduated from high school trying to find herself. She’s very smart, but her family has no money to send her to college. Immediately after graduation, her mother forces her to work in her older sister’s sweat shop sewing fancy gowns for department stores for very little money. In terms of a traditional narrative, not a lot happens to anyone in this film, but this is more a movie about a turning point. Ana hates working in a factory and knows that her future lies outside of her Mexican-American community in California.

Her manipulative mother is constantly putting her down because of her weight and her desire to leave the family. Director Patricia Cardoso has put together some of the most believable and beautifully flawed characters I’ve seen in a while. Ana is dealing with pressures at home, a budding romance with a fellow student, and a teacher who insists she apply to colleges and helps her find scholarships to make this possible.

REAL WOMEN is a special film that has what will undoubtedly be one of the most unforgettable sequences in film history: the five women who work in the factory all strip down to their underwear because of the heat, and they start comparing cellulite, almost turning it into a competition. Someone turns some music on and everyone starts dancing. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it is a cause of celebration. From the looks of the opening credits, it appears that REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES will premiere on HBO in the near future. Seek it out.

Just before the late-night screening of REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES, Roger and Richard broke form and held a Q&A before the screening. Since we hadn’t seen the film yet, most of the questions focused on more general topics regarding their show, how Richard was selected for his seat, and movies in general. One question that came up had to do with the internet’s influence on movies and movie marketing. Roger answered that the influence was two-fold: one, that audiences in general know more about a film before its release. Everything from casting news, effects previews, trailers, to fights on the sets are chronicled on various movie-related sites on the internet. Second, a whole crop of "young, talented critics" has arisen, many of whom have a larger reading audience than most print critics. They have a different agenda for liking or disliking a film, and are not shy or polite about expressing their opinions. [I’ll try and quote as accurately as my memory serves from this point on.]

Ebert: In fact, there’s someone here from Ain’t It Cool News who writes under the name Capone. Where are you? [I tentatively raise my hand.] Stand up for a second. [I do so.]

Roeper: They write under assumed names at that site, but there’s what he looks like! [I quickly cover my face and apply for witness protection.]

Ebert: And he’s a good example of one of these up-and-coming critics whom the movie studios dislike, but are becoming more and more a part of the process and the mainstream. His reviews are funny but still manage to make their point as well, if not better than, any "legitimate" film critic.

I swear this is what happened, and I have about 250 witnesses to back my story. Clearly, I was mortified by this experience, but I won’t lie. Being singled out in a positive way by a man who I’ve considered a roll model for my life as a film critic was a moment I will never forget. Forgetting this momentary head rush, the rest of the festival was great, and I’d do it again without even thinking. I love this job. Mmmmm, Ebert & Capone... And no, I did not see Roger poolside in a Speedo; not that I didn't want to.

Capone

"...Better Than, Any 'legitimate' Film Critic" -- Roger Ebert