Word: travolta
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...became the first foreign-language film nominated for best picture since Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers 22 years ago. Troisi was cited for his performance, Radford for his direction. Both the screenplay and the score were also nominated. In a race where favorites like Tom Hanks and John Travolta stumbled, and where Babe proved that pigs could fly at Oscar time, Il Postino gave the biggest shock...
...FLASHBULBS WERE POPPING two weeks ago when Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan showed up at a Hollywood theater for the premiere of Broken Arrow, the new John Travolta film. Make that the new John Woo film, for Hong Kong's No. 1 action auteur directed this $60 million thriller. Chan, whose gonzo melodrama Rumble in the Bronx hits 1,500 screens this week, was at the premiere to wish his home-town colleague well and to personify the friendly invasion of Hollywood by Hong Kong talent. Only one problem: by the time Jackie got inside, all the seats were...
Broken Arrow, a bomb-ticking chase movie about a daredevil pilot (Travolta) who steals two nuclear weapons, shows how easily the two cinemas can coexist. It flies at the speed of Macho 2 while allowing Woo to unpack his full cinematic arsenal: overhead shots, plenty of steamy atmosphere (Travolta smokes a lot), Cuisinart editing of the action scenes, slow motion to prolong the jitters and, for dialogue scenes that other directors would stand flatfooted and watch, lithe little tracking shots. If film school were fun, Woo would be the nutty professor...
...Graham Yost script, Travolta is a bad guy for the same reason Woo makes films the way he does: it's so darn much fun. Travolta and his rival, Christian Slater, are so steely that when they salute their arms make metallic whooshing sounds. And as Slater's only partner in saving the world, Samantha Mathis is just as tough. In an early face-off, he holds a gun to her head; she holds a knife to his neck. It's Woo's version of meeting cute...
Until now, and hopefully for a long time to come, the spectacle of the U.S. government being blackmailed by nuclear terrorists has been the province of books, movies (including a forthcoming John Travolta film) and a recent series of scary, attention-getting commercials by attention-needing presidential candidate Richard Lugar. Of course, the appeal of nuclear weapons to terrorists is obvious: if destabilizing society or drawing attention to one's cause is the goal, a mushroom cloud outranks truck bombs and sarin attacks...