The Wrap - Fandango's Hollywood and Movie Blog

As the year winds down, I thought I’d take a look back at 2007 and which films I liked best—awards and nominations and critics associations be damned. In no particular order, here are my 10 favorites of 2007.

Ratatouille: Its story and characters were delightfully endearing and CGI just jaw-dropping, but in the end it’s about a rat whose sole desire is to cook.  It was one stellar feat to make <i>that</i> story into a movie this awesome.

Knocked Up: Our first real introduction to the Judd Apatow phenom was a raucous bit of subversive comic genius about a one-night stand that somehow brought the love as much as it did the laughs.

Superbad: A cute, sweetly innocent story about friendship and growing up, wrapped up in a vulgar, base, and uproariously funny raunch-com.

Juno: I was sad when the credits started to roll on this startlingly brilliant little film that sucks you in with its snappy, sassy dialogue and bona fide star performance by Ellen Page.

Live Free or Die Hard: Proof positive that Bruce Willis hasn’t lost it, even though it’s been some 12 years since DH 3. Suspend your disbelief like the airborne helicopters and Stealth jet he takes down, and give
the man some love.

The Bourne Ultimatum: Simply put, the most suspenseful, action-packed, intelligent political thriller I’ve seen.

Transformers: I’d never seen the cartoon, didn’t know the characters and…er, Michael Bay directing? As far as low expectation vs. high reward, I did a 180-degree flip.

Sunshine: This stunning combo of horror and action with dazzling effects (and, um, Cillian Murphy looked pretty good too) was sadly overlooked by audiences. Sci-fi fans, seek this one out on the rental shelves. 

Sweeney Todd: Revenge-crazed Johnny Depp slices and dices innocents while singing a merry tune. Now <i>that’s</i> how I like my fractured gothic fairy tales.

The Simpsons Movie: This irreverent, silly movie had me rolling with its rude
humor - from its opening moments with a environmentally-conscious rock band sliding into the polluted depths of Lake Springfield. D’oh!  

If you’ve ever been to the Big Apple, you know what its like to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of your closest friends down 5th Ave., or being packed like sardines on the subway during rush hour.

So can you imagine the busiest parts of New York being shut down to make a movie?

I Am Legend’s director Francis Lawrence and writer Akiva Goldsman could—and did. I had the chance to hear about how and why they changed the setting from Los Angeles to New York straight from the mouths of the filmmakers themselves.

Goldsman: For a novel, it’s effective to render Los Angeles empty, but cinematically, [downtown] Los Angeles. is always empty. It wouldn’t be that sharp, “Ooh, where’d everyone go?”

Lawrence: We shut down various parts of the city for 40 days…57th St., Park Ave., 42nd St. We shot six days at Grand Central Station alone. You name it, we shut it down.

Goldsman: By the end of the shoot, none of us would tell anyone what we did for a living because you would hear, “Oh, you’re THAT [guy]!” There was not someone that we hadn’t stopped from getting somewhere. I don’t think they saw us coming, but once they sort of took us in, New Yorkers were pretty amazing.

Lawrence: We didn’t want to do the same grim world we always see in this kind of situation—the truth is, nature would reclaim the city and it would probably become a more beautiful place. We did some fun stuff, too. We show certain things in Times Square that aren’t actually built–yet. We got the designs from the city to build our set to be how it would look the year our apocalypse is supposed to happen.

Want Will Smith’s take on I Am Legend too? Click here.

Something cracked me up in the press notes distributed at a recent screening of the raved-about indie Juno, opening Dec. 7. “Writer Diablo Cody penned her debut screenplay Juno while working as a phone sex operator/insurance adjuster in Minneapolis. She did not attend Harvard.”

While I find that paragraph not just funny—intentionally or not (I imagine one does not have phone sex at the same time they are adjusting insurance, but you never know)—most of Cody’s unconventional background was left out. You see, long before writing Juno, Cody dumped her typist job to work as a stripper working Minneapolis’s clubs and peep shows. She also dumped her real name (Brooke Busey) and started chronicling her trials and tribulations in a risqué blog whose name shall remain unmentionable on this blog.

A Hollywood talent manager discovered her online journal and urged she send in a screenwriting sample. She sent him Juno, which she claims to have scribbled in a suburban Minnesota Target store. Director Jason Reitman read it, and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

I’m fascinated by stories about people with unlikely backgrounds who find fame and fortune in a jaded industry known for its reliance on nepotism, favoritism and ability to schmooze-ism. Cody might be making it big, but you’re more likely to see her wearing patterned stockings, pigtails and arm tattoo on full display than in a designer gown on the red carpet. The tale of her journey restores my faith in Hollywood.

The good folks over at USA Weekend have compiled an entertaining list of anecdotes and trivia about this season’s biggest movies. Here are a couple of fascinating tidbits you can keep in mind while at the theater:

Bee Movie:
Whether or not the bees would wear pants was the subject of filmmakers’ discussions for more than a <em>year</em>. At long last, it was decided they would wear no pants, only sweaters.

No Country for Old Men:
Josh Brolin was away filming Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse while the Coen brothers were casting the role of Llewelyn Moss, so he sent them an audition tape. They weren’t interested in Brolin as an actor, but USA Today reports they wanted to know who shot the audition tape (turns out it was directed by Tarantino & lensed by Rodriguez). The Coens finally reconsidered Brolin when showed up in person as their last interviewee.

Lions for Lambs:
Actor Derek Luke was packed waist-deep in the snow for two and a half weeks for a long, shivery scene in this movie.

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium:
Some 10,000 toys were used to populate the film’s mystical toy shop, which were culled from rare toy shows from 12 different countries around the world. 

The Mist:
For the earthquake scene, director Frank Darabont literally scared his cast into falling down and freaking out on the set. Unannounced, he played a loud recording of a real quake on hidden woofers while filming the scene.

I Am Legend:
Will Smith cracked up the set when he busted out an impromptu rendition of “Summertime”–while filming in 10-degree NYC weather.

Sweeney Todd:
Filmmakers were delighted when Johnny Depp, not known for his singing voice, took the lead role in Tim Burton’s version of the classic musical—but they didn’t hear the actor sing a single note until a mere eight weeks before production, after the film had already been cast, sets built and costumes made.

The Orphanage:
An abandoned house doubled for the film’s haunted  orphans’ home, where sound technicians recorded some scary stuff, including unidentifiable white noise and creaking floors.

Have you heard any intriguing 2007 movie trivia like the tidbits above? Write in and let me know.

Few writer-directors have had as widely variant careers as the brothers Coen, Ethan and Joel. Over their 23-year collaboration, they’ve made a dozen movies, none of which is the same as the last. Look at their latest, the intense, nihilistic No Country for Old Men, about a brutal killer hunting the man who stole drug money that has Oscar buzz all over it. Does that film seem like it could come from the same guys behind the nutty comedy Raising Arizona, about a couple of hicks who kidnap a baby? Or the bizarro Barton Fink, about a writers’ block-afflicted playwright who finds inspiration in strange places?

One commonality all the Coen movies have, though, be they whacked-out comedies or blood-drenched dramas, are their colorful, oddball characters (and perfectly cast actors to play them) who stick in your brain forever. Javier Bardem in the gritty, bleak No Country is no exception, as a truly terrifying killer (strangely named “Anton Chigurh”) with cold, evil eyes dead-set on his airgun’s sights. This movie might just be the embodiment of ALL things Coen: pitch-black wit, weird sensibility, acerbic cynicism, tension, and those unforgettable characters.

Fandango polled users on their favorite Coen movie prior to No Country, and the results surprised me a little. The light-headed cult classic, The Big Lebowski, scored highest with 31%, followed by O Brother Where Art Thou? at 28%, and Fargo at 21%. Raising Arizona was a distant fourth at 14%, followed by Miller’s Crossing (5%) and Barton Fink (1%).

So I want to know: What’s your favorite Coen brothers movie, and most importantly, why?