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2010-07-31T19:40:00.000-05:00

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Pop Culture OCD

Wild Card Tuesdays - The Dinner Game

2010-07-20T19:15:00.000-05:00

The Dinner Game (1998, dir. Francis Veber)

You've no doubt seen the trailer or commercials for the upcoming Paul Rudd/Steve Carrell film Dinner for Schmucks. This is its source material, a very small and wry French comedy that, unlike the American version never makes it to the titular dinner. Instead, we get a very clever farce from the same director that brought us La Cage Aux Follies and many other French comedies brutally remade by American studios. I'm beginning to think studios simply wait around for him to release a film so they can rush to produce a butchered remake. While not the kind of funny the American remake is shooting for, The Dinner Game will make you laugh through clever wordplay and increasingly convoluted misunderstandings

Pierre Brochant is excited about the weekly "idiots dinner" held by he and his businessmen friends. He comes upon Francois Pignon, Finance Ministry employee (think IRS agent) whose obsession is building landmarks out of matchsticks. Brochant sees this man as the perfect idiot to bring along with him. However, his wife has left him and he has injured his back on the golf course on the same day he is to take Pignon to the dinner. The squat little man arrives, thinking Brochant is offering him a book deal about his matchstick constructions. Over the course of the evening, Pignon helps Brochant makes fake phone calls to track down his wife, mistakes the wife for the mistress, and brings on of his auditing buddies over to help out, unwittingly revealing some shocking infidelities. The film appears to be heading down a maudlin path when it returns to its comedic elements in a very clever way.

Pignon is a very endearing character. He has had his wife leave him and wants to legitimately help Brochant, but he possess a short term memory and care barely retain the simple plans they hatch when calling people they believe Brochant's wife is with. Jacques Villeret plays the role of Pignon and manages to keep him from becoming a dolt. He's a clever, sensitive, eager to help simpleton and the audience sighs with relief when we realize he won't be subjected to the cruel evening Brochant has planned. From what I have seen of Schmucks, I get the feeling Carrell is playing a much broader, less sympathetic version of this character and that's a shame.

The Dinner Game plays like stage play. It's one set with characters coming in and out, a perfect comedy of errors. Schmucks looks like it is uninterested in the simplicity of the original and is opting for complex set pieces involving outsiders that we don't sympathize with but mock. The overly sentimental finale that the original avoids feels all but inevitable for the American remake. The irony here is that The Dinner Game emotionally earns that ending if it wants, while I suspect Schmucks will be so mean spirited that when it comes to that "our hero learns a lesson" moment it will come off as ludicrous.

Character Actor Month - Part 3

2010-07-18T14:37:00.000-05:00

Keith David (IMDB credits: 180 credits, The Thing, Platoon, They Live, Gargoyles, Princess Mononoke, There's Something About Mary, Pitch Black, Requiem for a Dream, Coraline)

Keith David is an actor known just as well for both his on screen performances as well as voice over work. When I see his face I immediately think of Childs in John Carpenter's The Thing. When I hear his voice I think of Goliath from Disney's Gargoyles, one of the best children's animated shows from the 1990s. David was born in Harlem, New York in 1956 and first found himself moving towards acting as a career when playing the Cowardly Lion for a school production of The Wizard of Oz. He entered into New York's High School for the Performing Arts and attended Julliard afterwards. You can definitely hear the classical Shakespearean training in his voice, particularly as the Celtic Goliath. David has become a frequent collaborator with John Carpenter and provided the voice-overs for three Ken Burns documentaries ("The War", "Unforgivable Blackness", "Jazz") and won Emmys for the first two. He is one of those actors more and more directors are using and his IMDB boasts 12 projects in various stages of production.

Paul Dooley (IMDB credits: 160 credits, Slap Shot, Popeye, Strange Brew, Sixteen Candles, Waiting For Guffman, Insomnia, A Mighty Wind, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Cars, Hairspray)

Dooley is one of those people that has always had a creative mind and was bound to be involved in entertainment and the arts somehow. Born in Virginia in the 1920s, Dooley was very into cartooning and even drew a regular strip that was part of the local newspaper. He joined up with the Navy, but after getting out and enrolling in West Virginia University he discovered theater. Comedy was his strength, so he moved to New York and did stand up for five years, and then worked as a stage magician and clown. Dooley was discovered by Mike Nichols and cast in the original stage production of The Odd Couple. In the 1970s he helped co-create The Electric Company for PBS and worked as one of its writers for its initial run. Around this time he also got involved with Robert Altman's films, playing key roles in A Wedding and Popeye. In the 1990s, Dooley got involved in the Christopher Guest movies, as well as becoming a regular in shows like My So Called Life and The Practice.

Grace Zabriskie (IMDB credits: 134 credits, Norma Rae, An Officer and a Gentleman, Drugstore Cowboy, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Fried Green Tomatoes, Ferngully, Seinfeld, The Grudge)

Grace Zabriskie was born in New Orleans and grew up amongst some interesting guests of her father's cafe and various business in the city. She claims that they were visited by Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and Truman Capote at various times. As a young adult, she wrote poetry and would perform it in coffeehouses in New Orleans as well as Atlanta. It was also during this time she became a very accomplished silkscreener, and she has been recognized for her very artistic lamps, which she says is an attempt to sculpt using light. Zabriskie is best known for her role as Sarah Palmer on David Lynch's brilliant Twin Peaks. While her character faded from episodes after the middle of the second season, she remains one of the most iconic figures in the series. Since then Zabriskie has had a recurring role on Seinfeld as well as continued to work with David Lynch, one of the few directors she says she continues to enjoy working with.

Harry Dean Stanton (IMDB credits: 173 credits, Cool Hand Luke, Alien, Escape From New York, Repo Man, Paris Texas, The Last Temptation of Christ, Wild at Heart)

Harry Dean Stanton was born to a Kentucky tobacco farmer, got a degree in journalism and radio arts, and starred in at least one episode of pretty much every Western television series from the 1950 through 60s. Stanton has the perfect face for the weather beaten soul that has seen too much in lifetime. It's helped him convey a lot of unspoken emotion, particularly in his best film Wim Wender's Paris, Texas. Stanton got a start in low budget films of the late 1960s like Two-Lane Blacktop, but went on to befriending up and coming directors like Sam Peckinpah, David Lynch, and Franics Ford Coppola. Stanton has become a favorite of critic Roger Ebert who says any movie starring Stanton can't be bad. Outside of film, he has toured bars and clubs playing covers of classic country on his guitar, a true modern cowboy.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Redacted

2010-07-17T17:15:00.000-05:00

Redacted (2007)

So we have caught up with Brian De Palma's body of work. Redacted goes back to a lot of the same territory as 1989's Casualties of War. We have American troops in a foreign land and the sexual violation of a native girl is the crux of the conflict. There's one soldier who above all the rest is still virtuous. This was one was written by De Palma as well and really shows off his weakness as a writer. However, there are some interesting technical elements to the picture, and it really easy very experimental for De Palma, both in its making and the distribution.

Told through soldiers' personal video diaries, CCTVs, news footage, and user submitted online videos, this is based on a true story where a squad of American soldiers were responsible for the rape of 15 year old girl and the subsequent murder and burning of both she and her family. The film did not do well upon its release, and in no way is this a great movie. However, many of the criticisms were jingoistic blather about De Palma wanted to imply that all soldiers are evil monsters. The fact that one of the squad members goes to the authorities with what happens must have gone over their heads. Its part of this thoughtless creed of "support the troops" which many interpret as do not question or think critically about the actions of the military. I don't believe every soldier over there is some sort of sociopath, but I believe the culture that surrounds the military breeds that in people who leaned that way in the first place. That said, De Palma doesn't present either the villains or the hero of the film in an interesting way at all.

The two vile soldiers who perpetrate the rape and murder are drawn cartoonishly broad. There are even scenes where they cackle like the hyenas in The Lion King. The hero is also without flaws and there's nothing remotely interesting about him. The type of evil that is most interesting is the kind that comes out of mundane and ordinary people. When you have two characters who appear to be walking cliches they don't come off as truly intimidating at all. A good filmmaker would make us like these guys, show us sympathy for them, and then reveal their darker nature. It makes us question ourselves. Even Sean Penn in Casualties of War, of which De Palma is really ripping himself off on, was a character I understood. Even though his action were abhorrent I could see what he saw in the world. What I did like was De Palma trying to do more with his camera. His typical POV shots were incorporated as part of the soldier's diaries and there's some interesting work done with website video.

Looking back on the films of Brian De Palma I have to defend him as a cinematographer. He may not always be a great all-around storyteller but he is one of the best cameramen I've ever seen. The level of tension he can generate in a film is amazing, and its all done through some of the tightest editing around. The moment in the prom scene of Carrie, as Amy Irving is figuring out what the bullies are about to do is such a perfect example of that. So much information is told without words, simply looks and cuts. The museum scene in Body Double should be shown to every wannabe filmmaker of how to tell a voluminous story in a only a few minutes and without a single piece of dialogue. Even watching the worst films of De Palma's, I always knew he would amaze me with the camera. Sadly, his career has been marred by too many failures in a row. According to IMDB, De Palma appears to be working on a remake of his great rock opera Phantom of the Paradise (seen before I started this marathon), a prequel to The Untouchables sub-titled Capone Rising, and The Boston Stranglers, based on a true crime book about the theory that multiple men were placed under the umbrella of one serial killer. My hope is that De Palma can still find a way to produce good films again, I know he has it in him and I think there's a strong possibility that he can rally a comeback in the same way that Francis Ford Coppola has been doing.

Criterion Fridays - Summer Hours

2010-07-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Summer Hours (2008, dir. Oliver Assayas)
Starring Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jeremie Renier

It's always refreshing to see a film made for grown ups. Too often American dramas dumb things down, maybe out of a lack of talent in the writer or maybe a lack of confidence in the audience's intelligence. Here director Assayas looks at the strange dynamic of being both the adult child of a parent and a parent to your own children. In one position you are still looked on as an infant or adolescent and in the other you are the supreme authority. This difficult place is used to examine how we deal with death and responsibilities placed on us by the dead. The whole thing is a very naturalistic, quiet piece of cinema that is rewarding and ambiguous. The answers we receive will be as open ended as the characters in the film, and like them, we have to learn to happy with that.

Helene has just turned seventy-five and has come to terms with the fact that her life is coming to an end. She takes her eldest child, Frederic aside and explains to him how the family's vast art collection and the country home they grew up in is something she wants him to maintain and make sure her grandchildren can bring their children to. Helene dies soon after her children make their last visit to the house, all of them caught up in busy lives: Frederic in Paris, Adrienne in America, and Jeremie in China. Frederic comes together with the siblings who all want to sell off the artwork and the house as they don't have the funds or time to maintain the property. Frederic concedes and they go about cataloging the contents of the home. Frederic maintains a sense of guilt as he watches the promise to his mother fade away.

Summer Hours is a film that will demonstrate how programmed you have become by cliched Hollywood plot devices. There is a never chance anything of major conflict with occur, no one is going to explode in an emotional rage and there will be no ironic twist of fate. This is a very relaxed film about a family and the compromises we all make as a part of families. Frederic never really puts up a fight and its hard to be angry at him. As much as his mother loved the collection her uncle had amassed and she inherited, it is almost impossible for her children to maintain it. What is interesting is how Frederic's teenaged daughter, Sylvie feels a strong emotional connection to the country house. The opening scene is of her and her little cousins running through the woods, playing, being children. The final parallels this, but with a more bittersweet tone as it is the last time she will be there.

This is not a film that has a message for you. Assayas simply tells the story of these three adult siblings, lives without melodrama, dealing with the aftermath of the death of a parent. What you are meant to get out of the film is what ever you want. So often in American mainstream cinema scripts are locked into formulaic beats and its all about hitting certain plot notes by certain page numbers. Here no one is rushed along, no one reveals some deep dark secret. Its very refreshing, and beautiful, and ultimately stays with you a lot longer than a script that sloppily goes didactic. If you are looking for an incredibly thoughtful film that lets you decide what you want it to mean, then I think you'll be in for a treat with this one.

Hypothetical Film Festival - Brothers

2010-07-15T16:16:00.000-05:00

It's as simple as the title, films that have very prominent brother relationships at their core.

American History X (1998, dir. Tony Kaye)

Everyone remembers Edward Norton as the terrifying, swastika tattooed skinhead. The scene where he curbs a young black man who had broken into his house is gut wrenching. What's interesting is how he so embodies evil in the flashbacks during the film, yet is an incredibly sympathetic character when reformed. His younger brother, played by Edward Furlong, is high school student struggling to understand how his older brother has turned his back on their family's white power ways. In many ways the film is a race against time picture, Norton is desperately trying to get his little brother to stop being motivated through hate before something terrible happens to him.

Capturing the Friedmans (2003, dir. Andrew Jarecki)

In the 1980s, Arnold Friedman, a Long Island resident was arrested for possession of child pornography. As investigations continued police believe that Arnold and his son Jesse were sexually molesting students of private computer lessons they gave in the home. The two other sons in the family become strained as the family is marked as a pariah in the neighborhood. The evidence for the case is based entirely on the testimony of the students, and it could be interpreted that these confessions were encouraged by the authorities. But that doesn't explain the magazines, or the overall strangeness of this family and these three brothers. A very disturbing film that, much like in real life, leaves you with a lot of answered questions.

Straw Dogs (1971, dir. Sam Peckinpah)

While the main plot concerns Dustin Hoffman and his British bride being plagued by the local thugs of her hometown, those thugs are brothers through their life together in this small village. In particular, David Warner as Henry Niles, a mentally handicapped man whom tags along with the boys in a major piece in the story. The film is violent and hard to watch. Hoffman basically cracks after being pushed too far by the thugs and precedes to murder them all. By the end of the film Hoffman has take Warner into his care, and Warner has shifted from being the brother of his villagers to a brother with Hoffman. His final line of the movie "I don't know my way home" is incredibly poignant given the larger context of the film.

Mean Creek (2004, dir. Jacob Aaron Estes)

Mean Creek is a film about actors you are familiar with doing very dark things. Actors from Nickleodeon and Disney Channel shows are featured here as well as a Culkin brother. It seems Sam (Rory Culkin) is bullied endlessly by George (Josh Peck). Sam's brother and his friends invite George out for a rafting trip with the intention of humiliating George on camera and then showing it to the kids at school. Things go wrong, someone dies, and the group are forced to deal with dark subjects you would never expect them to have to. A body has to be hidden, police have to be lied to, and their innocence is completely destroyed by the end of the film.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007, dir. Sidney Lumet)

Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke star as brothers whose choices have led them down some very sad paths. Hoffman is a successful investor who has been dipping in the company till to fund his drug habit. Hawke is divorced and estranged from his daughter, he needs money to prove he can share custody. Hoffman suggests they knock over their parent's jewelry store, knowing that insurance will cover the losses. They send in a third party and things go very bad. The film is told out of sequence and it definitely works well. We see the heist, not knowing who any of these people are, then we jump back and see how it was put together. We see a funeral then we see the brothers hatching their plan. This is probably one of the darkest films about brotherhood and a criminally overlooked film from a master director.

Newbie Wednesdays - Greenberg

2010-07-14T16:44:00.000-05:00

Greenberg (2010, dir. Noah Baumbach)
Starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Mark Duplass, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Hey, you know what isn't an interesting topic for contemporary cinema right now? Angst ridden white people who live comfortably and don't have to worry about any necessities. Especially when they aren't in some sort of hyper-realistic universe (i.e. James Bond, comic book movies). When the films are meant to be set in reality and feature characters whose biggest problems are that their band when they were in their twenties didn't work out, yet are still rich through other endeavors, then I don't really have much empathy towards them. This is yet another hugely pretentious piece of cinema from the grating Noam Baumbach. If you're interested in navel gazing claptrap you've found your film.

Florence (Gerwig) is the personal assistant to the Greenberg family, a wealthy couple with two kids and a dog. The Greenbergs are off to Vietnam to open one of the husband's hotels and they let Florence know his brother, Roger will be visiting for a few weeks while they are gone. Roger had a nervous breakdown and is coming the mansion to relax and work a doghouse. Roger and Florence meet, and she inexplicably ends up liking him. She learns Roger was involved with a semi-successful band in the 80s and they would have made it big if Roger hadn't freaked out and left. Roger runs into some of his old bandmates (Ifans, Duplass) and while one of them has gotten over it, the other still holds a grudge.

The character of Greenberg is not necessarily a bad concept. I think everyone enjoys a good curmudgeon every once and awhile. But the curmudgeonly attributes of Roger Greenberg come across as cliche and totally dishonest. It doesn't help that Noah Baumbach is doing what he did in Margo at the Wedding, one of the least watchable films I've ever had the privilege of falling asleep during. This is film straining desperately to be so clever and erudite, yet maintain that angst white middle class tone I hate. While some people have the same things to say about Wes Anderson's films, I argue that Anderson works his damnedest to make his work feel intentionally separate from reality, in effect making contemporary fairy tales. Baumbach thinks he's making a movie grounded in realism, and I guess for self-absorbed upper middle class people it probably is. I just have zero sympathy who have these problems.

There are few moments of good in it. I think Greta Gerwig is a great actress, more so in more mumblecore type movies than this one. She has a very natural ease in front of the camera and is one of the few people in the movie who doesn't feel like she is acting. There's a sub plot involving her ex-boyfriend that I found to be good to see in a film, its something that never really happens even in movies, and if it does there seems to be some moral cultural obligation to make it a big deal. Here Gerwig simply does this thing and everyone moves on with their lives, the way in reality it would probably be. Many of the supporting players are quite good, with the exception of Jennifer Jason Leigh as Roger's ex from back in the band days. Leigh is also the co-screenwriter, producer, and the wife of Noah Baumbach. She's just not very good in this role. If you have the option to watch this film, I can't really say its one of those worth one view ones. It really isn't, it doesn't say anything of importance, it doesn't work to achieve any interesting artistic aesthetic, it is just simply nothing.

Wild Card Tuesdays - The Living and The Dead

2010-07-13T17:56:00.002-05:00

The Living and The Dead (2006, dir. Simon Rumley)
Starring Roger Lloyd-Pack, Leo Bill, Kathy Fahy

It's very hard for me to write about this film after having just watched it today. It affected me in a deeply emotional way that very few films are able to. After cinema becomes a daily occurrence, you are naturally numbed to the typical emotional tricks of filmmakers. I was aware of this film first as a horror picture. The director, Simon Rumley came out of nowhere with this small picture that made the festival circuits. It never really the mainstream venues, instead traveling to the fringe horror festivals. I am very curious as to how it was received because more than anything this film is a deeply disturbing, yet also sensitive, portrayal of the pain of severe mental illness. The film achieved something very few have in recent years, it made me cry. There is a scene in the last third of the film that is so emotionally devastating I can't see how anyone could watch it and not break down.

The former Lord Donald Brocklebank must leave his dreary estate in the middle of the English countryside for unknown reasons. His wife, Nancy is suffering from cancer and his son James is severely mentally challenged, requiring daily pills and injections to keep his delusions in check. Donald instructs James that Nurse Mary will round to tend to Nancy. However, James forgets his injections and decides to prove he can be the man of the house by locking Nurse Mary out and trying to tend to mother himself. It's painful to watch James descend into madness while unknowingly hurting his mother again and again. The film makes a sudden major shift in the narrative about half way through that really cements the idea that we are seeing the story through the mind of a mentally ill person. And the finale is just jolting and ambiguous enough that I believe this film will stay with you for years.

Leo Bill should have received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of James. His face is recognizable as that of Darwin in Tarsem Singh's The Fall, as well as the arranged suitor of Alice in Tim Burton's recent Alice in Wonderland film. Here is firing on all cylinders, delivering a performance that is so powerful and unrestrained. Even now, just thinking about certain scenes I feel my gut in a knot and heart breaking all over again. James is both terrifying and sympathetic. I thought of the prayer of Christ on the cross, crying out "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do." That is exactly how we and the other characters in the film inevitably have to view James. His reality is a different plane of existence than ours and he can hurt people while believe he's simply giving them a hug.

I can't emphasize enough what a profound piece of cinema this is. While labeled "horror" I would argue that there is no human monster in the film. The monster is mental illness and the shattering pain and emotional trauma we humans are forced to bear. I don't know if I could ever watch The Living and The Dead again, much in the same way I am unable to revisit Requiem for A Dream. Both movies are so effective in getting across the helpless pain they want to portray that, while we acknowledge them as masterpieces, our psyches are too fragile to confront them again.

DocuMondays - This Filthy World

2010-07-12T10:48:00.001-05:00

This Filthy World (2008, dir.Jeff Garlin)

Unlike the other documentaries I have looked at, where you have multiple interviewees and tightly edited footage to form a narrative, this is simply one man on stage in front of a crowd, talking to them. It's basically a concert film, but while most of those feature either a music performer or comedian this is a film director. I guess the closest equivalent of this would be the Evening With Kevin Smith DVDs. Both are the result of directors whose personalities are as large as the reputation of their films. John Waters is definitely not a filmmaker who appeals to everyone, something he readily admits, but even if you don't enjoy his films I think it would be hard not to enjoy this one-man show about his love of all things strange.

Waters was raised in and around Baltimore, Maryland, which is to him like New York is to Woody Allen. Baltimore, named the Ugliest City in America at the time which Waters proudly cites, provided him with a front row seat to the grotesque. Rather than being repulsed, Waters was drawn to the misshapen and demented natives and made them movie stars. His love of film also began in Baltimore when, as a child, he became enamored with the gimmickry of William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, House of Wax) and Kroger Babb. Babb was a filmmaker who had little skill with filmmaking, and more with being a salesman. He produced films like Mom and Dad, which the Catholic Church gave a Condemned rating, and features actual birth footage, one of the few ways of showing female nudity in those days. Babb would have an obvious influence in Waters later work, and Castle got a very gimmicky homage with the Odorama cards handed out at showings of Polyester.

My favorite piece of the performance was the second half, where Water discusses how he even he has lines he doesn't think people should cross. This allows him to go into very poetic descriptions of teabagging, helicoptering, and other outer edges sexual practices that he gets pleasure from horrifying the audience with, but also seems to honestly think are too far. He addresses his child molestery appearance, which draws looks when he goes to see animated films at the theater. He talks about his love of attending trials and the little club of friends who try to one up each other about which they have attended (Waters got into one of 10 public seats at Watergate for a day, an elderly woman beat him, she was Nuremburg, the Super Bowl of courtroom trials). There's a wonderful sequence where he talks about the influence The Bad Seed has on him, creating a desire to be a secretly evil child. Even now, he says he loves to encourage children to get into trouble, mentioning when he was attending a parade recently and tried to convince a little girl to help him go knock people's bicycles over.

Like I said, Waters isn't everyone's cup of tea, nor should he be. If he was, then the entire agenda of his work would be subverted. He talks about how his career is now lauded in elite high society circles in New York and that he thinks its wrong. Even if you don't care for his films, I don't think you could watch this and not find some anecdote or piece of wry wisdom memorable. If you haven't seen his work some segments might be confusing, but nevertheless this is an excellent piece of insight into one of the ground breaking directors in America.

Director in Focus: New Director Poll

2010-07-12T10:00:00.003-05:00

As we wrap up my look at Brian DePalma's career with Redacted on Friday, I'm looking ahead to the director I will spotlight beginning in August. Below are the four choices. Vote by leaving a comment below.

John Cassavetes - To many he was the father of modern American independent cinema, filming on New York Streets without permits, making films that would never receive major accolades, but would inspire filmmakers for decades to come. His wife, Gena Rowland starred in many of his pictures, and his children have all gone into the film industry. While he is most famous for his role as Guy in Roman Polanksi's Rosemary's Baby, Cassavettes is also one of the most independent voices film has ever seen.
Films I Have Seen: Faces.

Sam Fuller - He didn't give a damn if they liked his work or not, he made films the way he wanted them. Fuller was a newspaper writer and crime novelist who joined up with the Army when World War II broke out and saw action in both the European and African theaters. It was during the liberation of a concentration camp that he made his first cinematic work, footage that was included in a documentary. Fuller focused on gritty crime drama and war films, but didn't present pretty pictures of anything. Studios hated his work, and it was with the shelving of his controversial film White Dog, which tackled issues of racism, that he left America never to make another film here again.
Films I Have Seen: Pick Up on South Street

Derek Jarman - Jarman was a filmmaker that optimized the British punk movement. He made films that took cultural tradition (The Queen, Shakespeare) and turned them on their heads. Jarman was diagnosed with AIDs in 1986 and died in 1994. Despite his illness he continued making films till the ending, becoming more meditative and thoughtful in his latter work.
Films I Have Seen: None

Werner Herzog - Herzog is nuts. This is something I have learned through reading about and seeing only a few of his films. Herzog likes to play with the viewer, fooling us and confusing us. He is obsessive, meaning his films are tightly crafted. His battles with frequent acting collaborator and peer in insanity Klaus Kinski are the stories of movie legend. And he's still making films.
Films I Have Seen: Strosek, Nosferatu, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Grizzly Man

Character Actor Month - Part 2

2010-07-11T16:14:00.001-05:00

Dylan Baker (IMDB credits: 91, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Happiness, Requiem for a Dream, Thirteen Days, Road to Perdition, Spider-Man 2)

You know him as Dr. Curt Conners in the Spider-Man films, most likely. I remember him mainly for two roles: A pedophiliac psychiatrist in Todd Solondz's dementedly hilarious Happiness and as the bizarrely backwoods ride in Planes, Train, and Automobiles. He had a modest upbringing in Lynchburg, Virginia and attended William and Mary before moving onto the Yale School of Drama, where his fellow classmates included Chris Noth and Patricia Clarkson. Like most character actors, Baker has garnered great success in live theater, even receiving a Tony nomination for his performance in La Bete, a comedic play inspired by Moliere and written in iambic pentameter. In addition, he's married to Becky Ann Baker, who played the mother on the amazing ahead of its time television series Freaks and Geeks, seriously, if you haven't seen it get ahold of the DVDs, I'm not asking you to, I'm commanding! One of Baker's most recent, best, and I suspect most overlooked performances was as deeply dark and disturbed elementary school principal in the Halloween flick Trick R' Treat.

Peter Stormare (IMDB credits: 100, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Dancer in the Dark, Minority Report)

He was one of the Nihilists Lebowski feared would take his balls, he was the man who put Buscemi through a wood chipper, and he was the doctor who replaced Tom Cruise's eyeballs. Born in Sweden in 1953, Peter Stormare (formerly Rolf Peter Ingvar Storm), has had great success in Hollywood but it didn't start until he was 43. Before then, worked with the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater for 11 years and then the Tokyo Globe Theater (Where he worked as the Associate Artistic Director). He moved to New York, was discovered for films by Ingmar Bergman, and played the Swedish equivalent of James Bond. It was a few years later when he was cast by the Coen Brothers in Fargo and finally got the international attention he deserved for all these years. I find Stormare to have incredible comic timing and such a dry sense of humor. The first time I saw him I didn't quite get it, but as he appeared in more and more films, it grew me on. His slightly doofy line deliveries and hollow eyed look. A style of comedy that is really much more about pulling back than going over the top.

O-Lan Jones (IMDB credits: 45, The Right Stuff, Edward Scissorhands, Natural Born Killers, Mars Attacks!, The Truman Show)

You probably know her as the fundamentalist wacko neighbor in Edward Scissorhands. Or maybe the waitress who won't give back the autographed photo to Jerry Seinfeld. Or any number of countless waitresses she has played. Jones said once, "Most actresses make money waitressing while trying to find acting work. I'm the only one who makes her career waitressing on screen." She was born in Los Angeles in 1950, started acting at age 16, she moved to New York where she met and married the brilliant writer Sam Shephard in 1969. The divorced in the early 80s, and she began making her appearances in numerous films, usually as a waitress. Recently, she has embarked on staging her own modern opera using all recycled materials to make props, costumes, and sets, featuring a live orchestra, and her own filmed video pieces. And about that odd first name. Her mother loved Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth so much she named her daughter after one of the characters.

Stephen Root (IMDB credits: 109, Office Space, Newsradio, Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, O Brother Where Art Thou, Finding Nemo, No Country For Old Men, Idiocracy)

If you don't recognize his face, I'm sure you know his voice. From television he is most known as Jimmy James, owner of the radio station in Newsradio and the perpetual loser Bill in King of the Hill. From films, you definitely know him as Milton, the man desperate to keep his stapler in Office Space. Born in Sarasota, Florida, Root didn't have any sort of extraordinary acting background, other than majoring in theater at the University of Florida. It was his friendship with Mike Judge that really got his career going, voicing Milton as a cartoon in a series of crude shorts and doing voices for Judge in Beavis and Butthead. From there, his career saw skyrocketed in the 1990s. Office Space has cemented his place as a cult film figure, while he has befriended the Coen Brothers and been featured in many of their films. He's one of the best comedic character actors out there, able to tackle a seemingly infinite range of types. His four episode run on True Blood was one of those you wish could have become a regular role.

Dick Miller (IMDB credits: 170 films, The Little Shop of Horrors, Rock N' Roll High School, The Howling, Gremlins, The Terminator, Innerspace, The 'Burbs, Pulp Fiction)

When I think Dick Miller, I think of poor Murray Futterman in Gremlins, a man who was convinced the little monsters existed but no one believed him. Miller got his start with the classic shlockmeister Roger Corman, most famously in the original The Little Shop of Horrors as Seymour. Director Joe Dante would cleverly wink at that film by casting the original Audrey (Jackie Joseph) as Miller's wife in Gremlins, one of those things you don't realize as a kid but love when find out about when you're an adult. Miller moved from working with Corman in the late 1970s, to being a regular in Joe Dante's mainstream Corman-like horror comedies. I absolutely love Miller in The 'Burbs as a garbageman who has zero patience for the paranoid neighbors in a Chicago suburbs street. Its one scene but it is incredibly memorable due to Miller and co-star Robert Picardo's perfect comedy timing together.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - The Black Dahlia

2010-07-10T17:02:00.000-05:00

The Black Dahlia (2006)
Starring Josh Harnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Mike Starr, Fiona Shaw, Rachel Miner

Coming off of the Euro Noir Femme Fatale, De Palma steps right into classic L.A. Noir, where the entire bleak genre really began. The film is based on the James Ellroy novel, which is in turn based on the real life murder of a young wanna be actress named Elizabeth Short, nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" by the newspapers. For the picture, we find De Palma restrained much more than in Femme Fatale. I didn't notice too many visual flourishes, instead a lot of post-production gauziness added to the film in an attempt to make the film resemble its counterparts in the 1940s. He manages to directly reference old movies, a trademark of De Palma's love of cinema. It's a long picture, over two hours and there are many sub plots and third act twists. So how does it all come together?

Bleichert (Hartnett) and Blanchard (Eckhart) are L.A. beat cops who meet during the 1947 Zoot Suit Riots (sailors versus hep cats). The two men are promoted to being bond agents and fate finds them a block away from the discover of Elizabeth Short's body. Blanchard becomes obsessed, while Bleichert becomes enamored with Blanchard's girl (Johansson). Feeling the pressure to keep his partner from going over the edge due to the case, Bleichert does some footwork and meets a young woman, Madeline Linscott who traveled in the same lesbian circles as Short. Through a series of "what a coinky-dink" sub plots, all of these characters become entangled, ending just like all good noir should end, most every dies. The only part that really diverges is the very final scene which felt very tacked on by the studio in an attempt to not let the film end on a "sad" note. Pshaw.

This is a real mess of a film. If we were judging it on style and production design it gets an A+. That's one thing you can never fault De Palma, the man knows how to make a film ooze style. The cinematography is pitch perfect, thinking in particular of a crane shot where as part of the background we witness the discovery of Short's body by a mother out pushing her baby carriage. It's done as this little thing in passing, that you could easily miss if you weren't paying attention. That sort of clever detail is hard to not love. The entire set and costume design is solid, no one looks out of place. As always, there are some interesting set pieces that had to involve thousands of shots and takes. So from a technical stand point, its an excellent film.

Plot wise this film is trying to do way to much and tie to many things together that don't make much sense. Characters who have no connection through the majority of the film are suddenly revealed through clunky exposition to have been sleeping with each other the entire time or connected to the murder of Short. By the time you get to the end its all so ludicrous and over the top it becomes absurd. While coincidence is a big part of noir, it at least as to make some sort of sense with the story told so far. I did however enjoy an incredibly macabre and creepy old Hollywood family that plays a crucial role in the film. While we only get a glimpse of their utter insanity, I found myself wanting to see more about them. There's also some references to The Man Who Laughs, a Lon Chaney, Sr horror picture that served as the inspiration for The Joker. All in all, a rather middle of the road with too much plot to cram into two hours.

Next: we wrap things up with a shockingly different film, revisting Casualties of War territory, this time in Iraq, Redacted

Criterion Fridays - Make Way For Tomorrow

2010-07-09T17:57:00.000-05:00

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937, dir. Leo McCarey)
Starring Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi

The economy is bad. Unemployment. The Housing Market. Small Businesses. Crashing every day. During The Great Depression, cinema reflected this moment in history where the common man was struggling to make ends meet. People were losing their homes, ending up jobless and on the streets, and Hollywood wasn't afraid to put that up on the screen.There were many escapist pictures in the theaters during the Great Depression, particularly musicals, but even those had elements of the financial struggles people were under going. Not so now. Particularly during the summer, we have mindless film after mindless film, featuring people so distant and out of touch with our own reality that, for myself, I become disengaged. What I am shocked to see is reality reflected on the screen.

Barkley and Lucy have been married for fifty years when the bank notifies them that their home for all this time is being taken away. Barkley hasn't worked in four years and he and Lucy don't have enough money for a new place right away. They contact their four adult children and explain the situation. Behind the couple's back, the children fight about who will take them, with it being decided that Lucy will go to stay with George, the eldest son, and Barkley will go to Cora, the eldest daughter. Lucy soon finds George's wife and teenaged daughter don't care for her presence in the home. Hundreds of miles away, Barkley has come down with a cold and is bedridden. Cora is infuriated she has to deal with him, but puts on the facade of a caring daughter when the doctor comes calling.

Make Way For Tomorrow introduces an idea that would still be controversial today in many circles: Do not live your life as a parent completely when you have children, you must have a definition outside of that. The children in the film are not monsters; stepping back when can see things from their point of view. But we also sympathize greatly with Barkley and Lucy, they truly gave every thing they had to their children and it may have not been the smartest move. Once their children became adults they vanished from their parents' lives and only now have becoming aware of the financial situation back home. The relationship between Barkley and Lucy is deeply loving, its rare that I see a couple on screen when I completely buy their relationship. The paths the film leads them down are not happy ones, like the title suggests, it becomes about accepting change in your life.

Orson Welles said of this film that "it would make a stone cry". He was exactly right. The love between these people is so pure and beautiful. The final sequence of the film involves them taking an unexpected car ride to the hotel where they honeymooned fifty years earlier. The coat check girl, the hotel manager, every one treats them in the way we wish their children did. The drinks are on the house, the band conductor plays an old tune when Barkley and Lucy hit the dance floor. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi master these characters with a sly humor that undercuts a lot of the sadness that pervades the film. It doesn't end on a hopeful note, but a realistic one, an admonition that life changes in ways don't want. We are powerless to fight it, so instead we should embrace the people around us.

It Should Be A Movie - Girls

2010-07-08T01:34:00.001-05:00

Girls (2005-2007)
24 issues, Written and Illustrated by Jonathan and Joshua Luna, Image Comics

In the 1970s there was a renaissance period for both horror and science fiction. Of course there was still schlock being made but there was also a lot of thought provoking speculative fiction presented to the movie going public. These films used the facade of the fantastic to talk about modern day issues and challenges. Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth looked at how fame corrupts once noble endeavors. Mad Max dealt with the fears of lawlessness. A Clockwork Orange chose to examine the ways in which society seeks to erase the individual by examining the most despicable element. A film adaptation of Girls would follow in the footsteps of these films as a picture looking at relevant social issues in a fresh inventive way and it would haunt the audience for a long time after.

In the fictional locale of Pennystown, USA the young Ethan Daniels is tossed out on ass after getting drunk and causing trouble at the local bar. Stumbling his way home, Daniels comes across a naked young woman who appears to not be able to speak. In his alcoholic haze he brings her to his house where he tries to get her to talk, instead she forces herself on him and they have sex. In the morning, Daniels gets the authorities but when they return to his home they find she has laid several eggs that hatch into full grown duplicates of herself. These strange women wander the town, killing any woman they come in contact and attempting to mate with any male. The townspeople attempt to leave Pennystown but find it surrounded by an opaque white dome that has cut off their communication with the outside world. In addition there is what appears to be a giant sperm in a field outside town. Tensions build as the women begin to see the men as weak and pathetic, as many of them succumb to the strange women, only exacerbating the problem and creating more of the savage creatures.

In a country where we hear permissive sex being blamed for all society's ills, the Luna Brothers examine that idea more closely by sequestering these townspeople and discovering how they behave when sex becomes weaponized. While the actual science fiction elements don't have a tight wrap up (things are left fairly ambiguous) , the story is a springboard for fascinating character interaction. The townspeople are variety of races, ages, and sexualities. One character is revealed as being gay in a rather gruesome way. This is comparable to films like Lifeboat or Cube, where you have people thrown into a pressure cooker and we sit back and watch how all the tension and building violence plays out.

The look of the comic is so crisp, clean, and symmetrical I was reminded of the way Kubrick would frame a shot. That in mind someone like a Paul Thomas Anderson would be already adept to film this. Even more than that, I see Duncan Jones, who brought us the minimalist science fiction masterpiece Moon being tailor made for a project like Girls. With Moon he showed us that the climax we expect for a film is not necessarily the one that is appropriate for the story. Throw in Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Ethan Daniels and think you would have a very fascinating film on your hands. In many ways it would be the opposite of Pandorum, released in 2009, where a awesome sci-fi premise was abandoned in favor of thoughtless action. So while we wait for Hollywood to greenlight a Girls film, do yourself a favor and pick up the collected volumes.

Newbie Wednesdays - The Last Airbender

2010-07-07T14:16:00.001-05:00

The Last Airbender (2010, dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

M. Night and I have a long history together. The first film I saw my freshman year of college was The Sixth Sense. It terrified me. Now, with a decade of film obsession behind me, it takes a lot to creep me out that badly, and I look at The Sixth Sense as a very sad atmospheric film, still good though. His next film, Unbreakable, is still one of my favorite comic book films, in that is captures a certain idea of superheroes that I've never seen another film come close to. About there is where my love for the director ended. I've seen every film he's made in the theater, the only other director who I have done that with is Christopher Nolan, sort of the antithesis of Shyamalan. While Nolan produces better and better films, Shyamalan only gives diminishing returns. This latest, his first foray into adapting an already established property, is an utter disaster.

If you haven't seen the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender (I've only seen the first five episodes) here's the premise. In a fantasy world, the planet is ruled by the four elemental nations: Fire Nation, Air Nation, Earth Nation, and Water Nation. A hundred years before the start, the Air Nation was wiped out and the Fire Nation began its quest to spread its empire across the globe. Two Water Nation children, Katara and Sokka, discover a little boy frozen in ice. Once thawed, they learn he is Aang, the last of the airbenders and the one destined be the Avatar, meaning control over all four elements. Searching for the Avatar is Prince Zuko, the exiled son of the Fire Nation king. He sails the world, hoping to prove his might to his father by bringing him the Avatar. Zuko's forces become aware of Aang and epic battles ensue.

The concept here is ready made for a film franchise, and it has the potential to be as popular and well loved as Harry Potter. It's a rich, complex universe that doesn't pander to kids. It treats them like intelligent beings who can handle more than stand alone episodes. The film however, creates a narrative mess. One of the elements of screenwriting that you'll find is seen as a no-no is voice over exposition. Its passable at the beginning of the film, just to set up the story, but when large chunks of the movie are rushed over and explained with voice over you have a major problem. The sort of things being summed up in a sentence by Katara, the narrator, are romantic relationships, something that you have to earn from your audience, make us care that these two people get together. Not so, and Shyamalan has never been too good with romantic relationships.

This is an incredibly faithful adaptation in terms of story elements, hence the rushed exposition as Shymalan tried to condense 20 episodes of the first season into 90 minutes. Motivations are cast out the window for the sake of hitting plot points. The most glaring omission from the the series though, is the sense of humor. In the cartoon Aang is a mischievous klutz who is both the hero and the comic relief. Katara and Sokka are also not great warriors and don't master their abilities in the series near as quickly as their movie counterparts did. To delete the humor and sense of growing into these powers sort of turns the film into something that an unfamiliar audience member won't enjoy and neither will a die hard fan of the cartoon. There really is no audience for this type of film, and its sad because the failure of this picture probably dooms the chances of a different director coming onboard and correcting things. And once again, we have to wonder how many chances does Shyamalan get before they revoke that DGA card?

Wild Card Tuesdays - Right At Your Door

2010-07-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

Right At Your Door (2005, dir. Chris Gorak)
Starring Mary McKormack, Rory Cochrane

The concept of Right At Your Door has the makings of an amazing movie. The story is relegated to single home with a small number of cast (2 lead, 2 supporting) and brings up topics and themes very relevant to modern America. With all of these elements present, you would expect the film to be good. Sadly, it never really becomes about anything. It touches on a lot of ideas briefly, then abandons them, then collapses as film that never really goes anywhere. Its definitely working hard to be important but the substance isn't there. It's truly disappointing though, because it could have been one of the best films about post-9/11 America.

It's a normal weekday morning in Los Angeles, Brad makes sure Lexi wakes up on time so she can head downtown for work. A few hours after she leaves, news reports come on talking about a series of coordinated explosions that have gone off in the most densely crammed traffic areas of the city. Authorities believe these were dirty bombs and that people need to stay in their homes, sealing their doors and windows off. Brad tries to head down but police have things blocked, so he gives up and waits in his home, terrified that Lexi is dead. However, Lexi turns up at the house, after Brad has sealed it off and now the heavy weight of confronting mortality is before them.

I see this as an awesome stage play. Two actors on stage, divided by a prop door. Very minimalist and very open to exploring lots of ideas about relationships, love, death, and the effects of terrorism and fear on contemporary America. Instead, the film has a great set up, I was completely onboard and ready to take this journey. And when Lexi first shows up after the explosion things are interesting, Brad is very torn. However, the film becomes repetitive in a way that is a technique of stalling. The picture is an hour and a half long and the screenplay doesn't seem to know how to stretch that one day out in an interesting way. So all sorts of ludicrous things are thrown in. A friend of the couple shows up, a neighborhood child is wandering the street, there's gestapo like military wandering the city. But it never adds up to a point, never reaches the profound pinnacle that it feels like it should. Instead we get a third act twist that is technically plausible, feels forced as a way to end the film on quasi interesting note.

DocuMondays - Prodigal Sons

2010-07-05T17:26:00.000-05:00

Prodigal Sons (2008, dir. Kimberly Reed)

It is impossible to watch this film and not be affected in someway. It is one of the most inside looks at a family and their struggles, particularly with mental illness. I can't say I have ever seen a documentary that captured such intensely intimate and violent moments on film. While the details of this particular family may seem drastically different from your own, when looking at the core nature of the relationships it is like any other: there is a lot of emotional pain and little done to resolve it for years. It's one of those documentaries that is bound to ignite arguments about what is incited by the director and what is the natural progression of these people in this situation.

Kimberly used to be Paul, the high school quarterback and basketball center. After leaving Helena, Montana as a teen, she moved to San Francisco and embraced her life as a woman. Meanwhile, older adopted brother Marc was in a car accident that left him permanently brain damaged. Marc has trouble building new memories and for him Kim is Paul. In addition, youngest brother Todd he came out of the closet and moved away to California. The center of the film is the three brothers issues of identity as it relates to their relationships with each other. Marc is having trouble with medication that is used to balance him and lashes out repeatedly in violent ways that chill you to the bone. This is told through the filter of Kim, who is angry that Marc still thinks of her as Paul, and its unsure if this is a choice Paul is making or if he is physically incapable of permanently processing this.

The documentary is sold in its trailer as being about the discovery of Marc's biological family. It turns out he was the son of Rebecca Welles, daughter of director Orson. Kim follows with her camera as Marc travels to Croatia and meets Welles' lover Oda Kodar. Kim and Marc seem to bond over this trip and it appears that he has control over his temper. The next time they meet up though, Marc flips out about a broken gas gauge on a truck and physically assaults Kim, all of it recorded on camera. Things continue downhill at the family Christmas when Marc brutally tackles Todd from behind, police are called, and Marc grabs a knife. He ends up in a mental institution. Tragically, Marc died as the result of a seizure in May of 2010.

The film has to re-find its footing a few times as it starts out as being about Kim returning to Helena for the first time as a woman. It quickly becomes about she and Marc's relationship, in particular his jealousy at never being the "good one". Kim was the straight A student and star athlete. Marc was held back in preschool and drank and partied to excess. Now that Marc has suffered this injury he has faded from being able to impress, now he appears to use his disability to make every family get together about himself. But how much does Kim incite and how much is Marc manipulating? The film never completely answers this, but it will stay in your mind for a long time.

Character Actor Month - Part 1

2010-07-04T14:15:00.001-05:00

What is a Character Actor, you ask? Think of a Coen Brothers film, O Brother Where Art Thou? for example. George Clooney is the lead. Clooney will always be the lead of almost whatever film he is in. You can say the same about Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts and so on. These actors have been categorized as "lead actors" meaning its general accepted that they are relatable enough to carry a film on their own. Yawn. Lead actors are incredibly boring, in my opinion. The most interesting roles are those of the character actor; an actor who has so captured a certain type or one who has taken the role of supporting characters in films. In O Brother Where Art Thou? John Tutturo and John Goodman are the character actors. These are the Ned Beatties, the Luis Guzmans, the Amy Sedarises. And many times, its the character actors who can make a terrible film actually watchable.

Stephen Tobolowsky (IMDB credits: 200 roles; Groundhog Day, Memento, Deadwood, Glee)

"That first step is a doooozy." For most of this is the line that cemented Stephen Tobolowsky into our psyches, I know it was for me. It was Ned Ryerson, the annoying insurance salesman and former high school classmate of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. In that role, Tobolowsky was able to repeat the same performance again and again, and somehow made Ned increasingly more annoying with each iteration. Tobolowsky is a Dallas native and made his film debut in 1976. It wasn't until later pictures, like Spaceballs, that audiences really took notice of his face. Beyond simply being an actor, Tobolowsky has become a well known personality in Hollywood due to his skilled abilities as a storyteller. He co-wrote True Stories with David Byrne after, according to Mr. Tobolowsky, staring at Byrne worldlessly for two hours and making pencil drawings related to plot ideas. If you can track it down, and I never have been able to, there is a documentary featuring his storytelling titled Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party.

Michael Lerner (IMDB credits: 158 roles; The Candidate, Barton Fink, Newsies, Elf, A Serious Man)

Lerner is known by his trademark silver hair and an educated Brooklyn accent. I remember him best as Jack Lipnick, the fast talking Hollywood producer who expresses his utter confidence in screenwriter Barton Fink, that is until Fink actually turns in his first script which transforms Lipnick into an apocalyptic figure of rage. Lerner got his start as a television guest spotter, popping up on The Brady Bunch and The Rockford Files, before transitioning to films as a supporting actor. No matter where he shows up, he is instantly recognizable, in particular I remember him in Safe Men (1995), a very small independent film, where he plays crime boss Big Fat Ernie Gayle who accidentally hires two singers (Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn) as safe crackers. Gayle has a son, Bernie, Jr. who dresses and behaves like his father minature clone, as well as a henchmen named Veal Chop (Paul Giamatti). A very odd film, but full of great work from other character actors as well.

Beth Grant (IMDB credits: 142, Rain Man, Donnie Darko, The Rookie, Little Miss Sunshine, No Country For Old Men, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, King of the Hill)

She really doubts your commitment to Sparklemotion. The role of the uptight conservative Christian schoolteacher in Donnie Darko has cemented itself in the minds of many of my peers and it was definitely a standout in an amazing career like Beth Grant's. Grant was born in Alabama and its hard to believe she is 60 years old. The character type that she seems to have captured is the one mentioned above, a rules stickler and a Bible thumper. As a youth she was an incredibly accomplished young woman, working as a page in the North Carolina Senate and being recognized as a talented and gifted student by the North Carolina governor. Grant is a staunch liberal and enjoys creating these characters audiences love to hate, which she admits are based off certain people she grew up around who expressed very narrow minded views. Grant has taken her energy from years involved in politics and transferred them into a career that would exhaust the most energetic twentysomething, not only taking on multiple film and television roles a year, but also working in live theater for which she has won multiple awards.

Brad Dourif (IMDB credits: 133, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dune, Blue Velvet, Child's Play, Alien: Ressurection, The Lord of the Rings)

One of the most recognizable actors I'll be talking about, Dourif has had a character actor's dream of a career. His second film was his breakout role as poor tragic Billy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and he has kept working ever since. Even in film duds like David Lynch's Dune or the dismal tv mini-series Wild Palms, Dourif is always a standout. He's just one of the actors with the wonderful combination of an interesting look and awesome talent. Dourif lent his voice to the killer doll Chucky in the Child's Play series which has garnered him a huge following in the horror film community and, what is likely his biggest role to date, he played the bewitching Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Dourif dipped his toe in playing the lead early in his career, most prominently in John Huston's Wise Blood, a film that is by no means perfect but showcases the intensity Dourif brings to every role.

Margo Martindale (IMDB credits: 71, Lonesome Dove, The Rocketeer, Dead Man Walking, The Hours, Million Dollar Baby, Dexter, Paris Je'Taime, Walk Hard, Hung, Hannah Montana: The Movie)

Margo Martindale is one of those actors, that when I see them on the screen, I am immediately happy. There is something about her persona and the types of characters she plays that are comforting. She looks like your mom, but she has taken on such a variety of roles, playing everything from doctors to prostitutes to a woman soliciting a prostitute to mothers to nuns. Beyond film, she has led an amazing career in the theater, getting a Tony nomination in 2004 for the role of Big Mama in a revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She was also in the original stage production of Steel Magnolias in 1987 and her role was played by Dolly Parton in the theatrical version. Martindale hails from Jacksonville, Texas and started, like many actors, in commercials, her most well known being a Downy fabric softener series that first made her a recognizable face to the public. My favorite performance of Martindale's has to be from Alexander Payne's segment in the short film collection Paris Je'Taime. It's a thing of beauty and you should find it...right now...go!

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Femme Fatale

2010-07-03T17:11:00.000-05:00

Femme Fatale (2002)
Starring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney

De Palma came off of Snake Eyes and went in a total 180 to make Mission to Mars. I don't think any one could have really predicted that film from him: A science fiction film set in the future involving a rescue mission to Mars with aliens and special effects and so on. It was definitely a risky move on his part, and ultimately it failed. There were moments that worked, in particular a planetfall sequence involving risky maneuvers using a deep knowledge of gravity and physics. It had a lot of tension in and drew me in, but overall the film was a mess. So for his second film of the 21st century, De Palma revisited some Hitchcock elements, but more he dipped fulling into the Noir genre, something he had skirted his entire career but never gone full bore into.

The film opens on a heist being taken by a trio of anonymous figures. The main element in the heist is a tall, attractive blonde posing as a photographer. She lures the arm candy of a director at a film premiere in Cannes to the bathroom, and the two women begin having a tryst. The photog undresses her from the flimsy gold and diamond encrusted chest ornament (its not really a shirt or bustier, its like gold snake that doesn't cover all the bits and such). A second person takes the pieces of the ornament at it drops to the floor. Things go wrong and the photog double crosses the man running things and heads off with the diamonds. Through a case of mistaken identity she ends up in the place of a French woman whose husband and daughter have just been killed. Her life diverges onto a very strange path that culminates seven years later in a series of double crosses and cons.

This film is one where De Palma's camerawork completely meshes with the plot. The opening heist sequence, taking place in a lavish theater in Cannes is so much fun. Its obvious that Mission: Impossible was the practice, and this heist is its culmination to perfection. Seeing all the devices and methods employed to get the ornament is lots of fun. Its also full of that nervous tension that makes those types of scenes enjoyable to watch. We root for the thieves and wriggling in our seats as security inches closer and the chance that every will fall apart goes higher. The entire sequence is near wordless and, like many of De Palma's top film moments, could be presented as short film unto itself.

Rebecca Romijn is not a great actress, I know I shocked you with that statement. But, when you think about it, neither was Grace Kelly, but she made a hell of a Hitchcock female lead. Romijn does what she needs to do here, the classic film noir femme fatale is not really a three dimensional figure. And I have to say she fooled me during many of her double crossing, well both she and De Palma together fooled me. Like any great noir female she creates stories that make her sympathetic and earn the trust of those around her. She is duplicitous and evil, yet we root for her. Antonio Banderas' tabloid photog on the other hand is not quite as charismatic or interesting, even though he makes for a more plausible protagonist.

The third act twist seemed a bit out of left field and reminded me of the much better Mulholland Drive (if we're talking metaphysical identity mysteries, its is better). There are clues sprinkled in the first half of the film that hint at two interpretations of what happens in the rest of it. This could be a Dorothy Gale instance of imposing faces onto figures in one's psyche or it could all be literal. De Palma never says for sure but he leaves the door open so that either makes sense within the universe of the film. There are set pieces galore here and a real admittance that this is not about substance, its about style. The fact that the director pulls this off in such a technically clever way makes it heaps more enjoyable than whatever a style focused director like Michael Bay offers up. The film was a colossal financial failure for De Palma, however, something he hasn't recovered from in the eight years since.

Next Up: The Black Dahlia and De Palma bombs again

Criterion Fridays - Close-Up

2010-07-02T12:23:00.000-05:00

Close-Up (1990, dir. Abbas Kiraostami)

In America, its not uncommon to see a film "based on a true story". The audience has come to expect that while names and events are real, screenwriters have "punched up" the script with dramatic tropes and formulas designed to add drama to what they see as dull, uninteresting reality. On the opposite end of things, you have documentaries like Capturing the Friedmans where the reality of the situation is so horrific and dramatic we have to wonder how much is exaggerated and manipulated by the director. In Abbas Kiraostami's film Close-Up he takes an approach to the "based on a real story" movie that is some sort of amalgamation of narrative film and documentary. This is one of few times I have watched a film unable to figure out what was reality and was staged.

The film revolves around the case of Ali Sabzian, a man posing as Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and receiving the good will and shelter of the a family in Tehran as a result. The films opens with an obviously staged scene, the reporter, who first published the story that brought it Kiraostami's attention, is traveling with police via taxi to the family's home to witness the arrest of Sabzian. From there the film becomes a patchwork of the actual video footage of Sabzian's trial and re-enactments of the events. The re-enactments actually feature the real people involved, including Sabzian. The reason this could happen is, that Sabzian never stole from the family he stayed with and the crime was non-violent. By the end of the film, we learn what Sabzian's motivation was and see the family show great sympathy for him in court.

While most films about real crimes attempt to illuminate and make the mystery something that can be understood, Close-Up works to confuse things and make Sabzian a harder and harder character to pin down. What it becomes is a meditation on why someone not involved in the Arts would feel such a strong connection to someone who made their living off of cinema. Sabzian lives with his mother in the wake of divorce. His wife took one child, his mother raises the other. He works in a dead end job as a printer, and Sabzian claims that in director Makhmalbaf's work he finds his own suffering put into words he cannot explain. Sabzian is an incredibly sympathetic figure, but even he confuses us because he talks about how he feels drawn to be an actor, that the idea of losing himself in a character is appealing. So, is the Sabzian speaking court truly his honest self, or another persona he has taken on?

This was not going to be the film Kiraostami was supposed to make at the time. However, after reading about the story in the paper he became obsessed with it and couldn't sleep. So he contacted the parties involved and began making the film. As much as he wants to capture reality on film, he unabashedly manipulates certain scenes. When Sabzian is released from jail at the end of the film, he meets the real Makhmalbaf there are "audio difficulties" with the microphone equipment. Kiraostami has admitted freely after the fact that the audio problems was a manufacturing of him out of respect for the conversation between the two men, but instead of simply saying he was doing this, he made it another layer in the reality and fiction of the film. This is definitely a film that challenges the perceptions of the audience and will make them constantly question the reality or artifice of each and every scene.

Hypothetical Film Festival - Unreliable Narrators

2010-07-01T15:56:00.000-05:00

There's a very interesting plot device called the Unreliable Narrator, wherein the point of view you are getting the story from comes from a person who is possibly skewing the facts in their favor, creating a story that is not quite true. Here's some films that use that idea to great effect.

Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Rashomon was the introduction of Kurosawa and post-war Japanese cinema to the world. The framing of the story was unlike anything that had really been seen in cinema, but had roots in older literature, particularly Shakespeare (whose works would be a major influence on Kurosawa throughout his career). A woodcutter and priest are seeking shelter in the husk of an old building while it storms outside. A passerby enters and they explain a strange murder of a samurai and the court case in which his wife, the bandit being accused, and the spirit of the samurai himself all testify. Through the three differing viewpoints we get three different pictures, with the added framing of these figures telling us the story. It's a like a hedge maze of narrative.

Amadeus (1984, dir. Milos Forman)
The elderly composer Salieri tries to kill himself but is stopped. Later he is visited by a young priest and the old man tells the tale of his rivalry with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and how Salieri believes he killed the virtuoso. Salieri of course frames himself as pious and obedient, devoted to tradtion. Amadeus is seen a lewd and bawdy figure. Salieri sees his craft as a gift from God and cannot comprehend how someone as heathen and ribald as Amadeus was given a gift that far surpasses his own. The question we must ask is, how honest is this portrayal of the composer, and is this Salieri's attempt to justify his hand in Amadeus' death?

Memento (2001, dir. Christopher Nolan)
Both the film that introduced us to director Nolan (The Prestige, The Dark Knight) and what presents probably the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. Leonard is a man without the ability to form new memories. This was the result of a break-in at his home years prior that also resulted in the death of his wife. Now Leonard is on a hunt for the man responsible. Because of his lack of new memory he has tattooed key facts about the assailant on his body. Beyond that, he carries a Polaroid camera where ever he goes, photographing acquaintances and scribbling notes about them on the pictures. But what does Leonard really know? As we experience time in the same way Leonard does, we will ask lots of questions and when the disturbing conclusion comes about we will be left questioning Leonard himself.

Spider (2002, dir. David Cronenberg)
Dennis Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) has just been released from a mental asylum. The reason why he was there in the first place is not revealed at first, instead we follow him to the work home he has been assigned to in an attempt to transition back into society. He immediately draws the ire of the housekeeper and befriends housemate Terrence (John Neville). Mixed into his day to day life are nightmarish flashbacks to his childhood, focusing on his alcoholic father (Gabriel Byrne) and his beaten down mother (. The story of their tumultuous relationship is what forms Dennis and ultimately drives him to the asylum. The reason behind his nickname, Spider, is tied directly to this childhood incident. But then you must ask yourself, how reliable are the childhood flashbacks of a psychopath?

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002, dir. Don Coscarelli)
The film is told from the perspective of Elvis Presley (played brilliantly by Bruce Campbell), or it could be mechanic Sebastian Haff. Presley explains that he traded places with Haff in the 1970s to get away from the business, and for some reason the staff of his nursing home doesn't believe him. Also living in this home is a black man who claims to be President Kennedy (Ossie Davis), explaining that he was dyed black and abandoned in the nursing home after the assassination attempt. Terrorizing the elderly at night in this home is an ancient Egyptian mummy who, for some reason, has taken on the garb of a cowboy. The two men, unable to get the staff on their side, take matters into their own hands and battle the mummy. But what if they are simply just two crazy people?

State of the Blog - First Half of 2010

2010-06-30T15:23:00.001-05:00

So I have been running the blog since November 2009, longer than I have kept any of these things going before, so that's impressive for me. The blog has garnered over 600 visits since the start of the year ranging from all over the U.S. to Europe and Asia. There's some interesting things I have coming up on the blog, that I think you'll enjoy.

- Dropping Jolly Good Thursdays and going to alternate between Hypothetical Film Festivals and It Should Be A Movie. ISBAM will focus mostly on comics at first, and present a property which I have read or encountered that would make a good film.

- I will be coming to the end of my focus on Brian De Palma in July, so be on the lookout for the next poll on my next director. Right now, I am pretty sure Samuel Fuller and Werner Herzog will be two of the choices, so if you wanted to find out a little bit about them before the poll is put up, go ahead.

- I have been researching some incredible looking films for Wild Card Tuesdays, mostly independent or overlooked pictures from the last decade, with some older films thrown in along the way. In July, I'll be looking at The Dinner Game (which has been remade into the upcoming Dinner for Schmucks) as well as the Peter Sellers' picture The World of Henry Orient.

- DocuMondays are also kicking into high gear with some very dynamic films. Monday I'll be reviewing Prodigal Sons, a film that got a lot of attention a few months ago. Will be focusing my attention a lot more personality driven docus as well (Zizek!, Beaches of Agnes, Stevie) so keep a look out for those.

- As you've probably noticed, in June Fridays became focused on films from the Criterion library. That is definitely going to provide a lot of material for years to come, and is finally getting me to sit down and watch those films on my list. This Friday, I'll be reviewing Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's 1990 film Close Up, just released on DVD last week. In addition to that I will be looking at some films by Sidney Lumet, Powell and Pressburger, as well as sampling some directors I have never experienced before.

- In upcoming months I'll be presenting some themes: For July it is Character Actor month, August will look at my favorite Director/Actor pairings, September will be Hispanic Cinema Month, October will be a month full of just horror films, and in November I'll be looking at my favorite films based on books.

Hope you stay with the blog for the next half of 2010. I encourage you to leave your comments and feedback. I'm always interested to know what the readers think.

Shadows in the Cave Digest #06 - June 2010

2010-06-30T12:22:00.000-05:00

Features
My Top 40 Favorite Film Moments: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma
Casualties of War
Bonfire of the Vanities
Carlito's Way (Movie of the Month)
Snake Eyes

Reviews

DocuMondays
We Live in Public
Objectified
Dogtown and the Z Boys
Art and Copy

Wild Card Tuesdays
Someone's Knocking at the Door
Bad Lieutenant 2
Three Days of the Condor
Afterschool
True Stories

Newbie Wednesdays
Mystery Team
Get Him to the Greek
I Love You Phillip Morris
MacGruber
Toy Story 3

Jolly Good Thursdays
Five Minutes of Heaven

Criterion Fridays
Knife on the Water
The Loves of a Blonde
Amarcord

Next Month:
Jolly Good Thursdays alternates between Hypothetical Film Festivals and It Should Be A Movie!
Character Actor Month!
We come to the end of Brian DePalma's films!
Vote for the next Director in Focus!

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 8

2010-06-30T12:09:00.002-05:00

35) The Wedding of Kermit and Piggy (The Muppets Take Manhattan, 1984, dir. Frank Oz)

It will never be a canonical great moment in cinema, but for me as a little kid it was the perfect ending to the Muppet film trilogy. You get an insanely large cast of characters, including those from just around the block on Sesame Street. Also, Piggy's laugh when Kermit asks about Gonzo still cracks me up.

36) Pure Imagination (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 1971, dir. Mel Stuart)

Gene Wilder in the 1970s is always perfection. And this song works perfectly to introduce us to the inner working of the fantastical chocolate factory.

37) You're Shit (Happiness, 1998, dir. Todd Solondz)

One of the most funny and depressing movie openings ever.

38) Chance Enters The World (Being There, 1980, dir. Hal Ashby)

In Peter Sellers' final performance he gave us the best film of his career. The mentally challenged Chance is forced to leave the brownstone for which he gardened after the owner dies. It's implied Chance was the owner's illegitimate son, and he never left the house in his life. This scene is gorgeous piece of comedy following Chance on his first day out.

39) Sardine? (The 'Burbs, 1988, dir. Joe Dante)

This film was watched endlessly in my house as a child, and I think it is still one Tom Hanks' best comedies and criminally underrated. This is the perfect scene of awkwardness as the characters meet the neighbors they suspect are serial killers

40) Starchild (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

The most hopeful film ending of all time!

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 7

2010-06-29T15:26:00.000-05:00

31) Dancing Chicken (Strosek, 1977, dir. Werner Herzog)

The final scene of a very odd film about Germans coming to live and work in rural America. Don't ask questions, just experience.

32) I Knew These People (Paris, Texas, 1984, dir. Wim Wenders)

This is a slow burning film, but when it hits it emotional peak (this scene) it devastates you. Harry Dean Stanton has never been better, and Nastassja Kinski is perfection. One of the most over looked films of the 1980s. If you haven't, find this and watch it!

33) He's So Happy, He's Crying (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 1987, dir. Frank Oz)

One of the best comedies of 1980s that holds up even today. Steve Martin was still funny at this point, and Michael Caine can even go toe to toe with him. Still makes me laugh.

34) Hope (The Great Dictator, 1940, dir. Charlie Chaplin)

It's not his best film, and its not his best scene, but for me its such a great speech. You can argue that it shouldn't count...but this is my list and I'm putting it on here dammit!

Wild Card Tuesdays - True Stories

2010-06-29T14:58:00.000-05:00

True Stories (1986, dir. David Byrne)
Starring David Byrne, John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz, Spalding Gray

I remember making long trips in the car as a child and feeling a sense of excitement as we pulled onto off ramps, stopping a strange gas stations and towns on our way. The journey and these stops always held much more interest to me than the destination it seems. I can distinctly remember driving through the Smoky Mountains and drinking Faygo Root Beet, a brand I had not had before. True Stories felt, for me, like stopping in of those little towns along the way and staying a bit longer than usual. Virgil, Texas is however a byproduct of the strange mind of David Byrne, lead singer of The Talking Heads. Things are quite off from the real world, but that just makes it all that more interesting.

Byrne is the nameless narrator, decked out in stereotypical Texan gear: Ten gallon hat, western wear, cowboy boots, and driving around a cherry red Cadillac. He delivers exposition with a very monotone demeanor, explaining the underlying psychological aspects of urbanization creeping into Virgil. Among the cast are John Goodman as Louis, a man so desperate to find a mate he has a marquee outside his home reading "Wife Wanted", Swoosie Kurtz as Miss Rollings, a rich woman so lazy she never leaves her bed, and Spalding Gray as Earl, a man who has not spoken to his wife in 15 years but still seems to have a happy life at home. The stories are all leading towards a town-wide celebration taking place on stage being constructed in the wilderness. The Narrator visits with the characters who seem to have a familiarity with him, and various Talking Heads songs are re purposed to expand upon characters' motivations.

I've always enjoyed when musicians set out to make films. They are rarely huge hits and usually end up as cult classic movies. I knew going into this one that Byrne has a very unique sensibility, which I had seen in videos of his concerts, and in particular the Jonathan Demme concert film Stop Making Sense. That sensibility is translated here into a film that is more like a quirky short story collection than anything overly cinematic. And it totally works. Certain songs, like "Dream Organizer", so perfectly work for the character they are attached to that you have to wonder if this was the character Byrne had in mind when he originally wrote the song. The cinematography is also top notch, I think a lot of that coming from Byrne's background in art school. The composition of many shots are not what we expect, leaving tons of negative space, and making for something that could be a framed photo on its own.

It's also interesting to see some actors before they made it big, and one whom I never thought of as a traditional film actor. Spalding Gray was a quite a surprise to see, as I only knew him through his monologues (you should all check out Swimming to Cambodia). He does a decent enough job, though comes off a little stiff. Goodman and Kurtz are definitely the best of the bunch, each hamming it up in a way that totally works with the atmosphere Byrne has created. Jo Harvey Allen was also a standout as a perpetually lying woman who takes credit for "writing half of Billie Jean" as well as being JFK's lover in Texas, whom he met with before the assassination. The film is definitely a fun, quirky picture that can be incredibly refreshing compared to most Hollywood films.

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 6

2010-06-28T18:39:00.001-05:00

26) I See Now (City Light, 1931, dir. Charlie Chaplin)

City Lights is so simple and perfect. This final scene showcases the fact that, while Chaplin is remembered as a great comedian, he also could tell a story of great emotional depth.

27) Who's The Commanding Officer? (Apocalypse Now, 1979, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

This is the scene in the film that truly sums up the insanity of war for me. It is the last American outpost in Vietnam and it is a waking nightmare.

28) Forget it Donny, You're Out of Your Element (The Big Lebowski, 1998, dir. The Coen Brothers)

Walter Sobchek is one of the great American fictional characters. There's not much more than that.

29) Ministry of Information (Brazil, 1984, dir. Terry Gilliam)

A wordless scene that conveys all the information we need to know about this bureaucracy through the camera lens. Plus the late composer Michael Kamen inventively uses typewriters as an instrument in the score.

30) Zoe and the Spider (The Sweet Hereafter, 1998, dir. Atom Egoyan)

From a criminally underrated film, this scene features Ian Holm telling his daughter's childhood friend about an incident from the girl's life that metaphorically corresponds to the drug addiction he is trying to save her from now. Beautifully told.

DocuMondays - Art and Copy

2010-06-28T17:01:00.000-05:00

Art and Copy (2009, dir. Doug Pray)

It's everywhere. You experience it almost every hour of the day, and it is usually while you are in a passive state. It persists and nags at your brain without you ever realizing it, but when you see it done exceptionally well you sit up and make note. Advertising is a modern psychological virus. The majority of it is terrible, which makes sense when you think about how much of it there is. As the film states, we experience 5,000 advertisements a day in multiple mediums. When it is done well, we slip out of passivity, sit up, and make note. What's interesting is the best advertising either sets an atmosphere without every directly referencing the product, or is completely direct about the product and the emotion that goes along with it. This documentary interviews the pioneers of modern advertising from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.

The documentary is structured in a very clean way. Each section of the film is divided with a scene without dialogue and statistics on advertising placed over scenes of urban meditation. The first section of the film talks about the environment the featured advertisers came into. We've all seen ads from the 1950s which have an air of a false stereotypical salesman's pitch. With the young turks that took over in the 1960s, they began to create provocative ads that didn't necessarily give the viewer information on the product, but evoked curiosity and emotion in them. The Volkswagen Beetle ads of the late 60s were a major breakthrough in American advertising, where the quirkiness of the product was acknowledged. Very straightforward taglines were used instead of just making the logo swallow up the space.

It was the firm Doyle Dane Bernach that brought us the Beetle ads, and the shockingly harsh (for its time) American Tourister luggage ad, as well as the hyper arty Braniff airline campaign and finally the I (Heart) NY image. Mary Wells, the Peggy of her time, was an incredibly inventive and creative copy editor who took her background in theatrics and applied it to advertising. The sense of drama in commercials is something that sticks with us today (think Budweiser frogs, Taster's Choice soap opera). At the time these ideas were presented, the good old boy network in charge were confounded and even the clients were often times frightened at the possibility of risking their brand on such ideas.

The documentary focuses a lot on the divide between the business side and the creative side, particularly how in the old paradigm, the accounts people were over creative. In the 1960s, this was subverted with the creative types either becoming more aggressive or striking out on their own. The East Coast was also the mecca of advertising so no one was noticing when the West Coast firms began rolling out revolutionary campaigns. It was one of these firms that got the Apple Computers contract and brought up the "1984" Superbowl ad, introducing the Mac to us through a Ridley Scott directed ad. You never see the Mac once. This firm still holds the Apple account and came up with "Think Different" in the 1990s and the current silhouette iPod campaign.

The final segment of the film deals with the ethical responsibilities of the advertiser, in specifics how it ties to politics. They feature the Morning in America Regan ads from 1984 that are unlike anything out today, and epitomize the way an incumbent can run and win again. Some of the interviewees agree that the ads works, but from an ethical perspective they find it misleading because of the facts it ignored. Hal Riney, the man behind the Morning in America ad confesses that his habit of going purely emotional in his ads goes back to a childhood where affection was held back from him. In the majority of his work images of the Rockwell America is evoked in a cleverly deceptive way. If you are at all interested in media and the way humanity's decisions can be shifted by the creative this would be a very insightful film to digest.

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 5

2010-06-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

21) I'm Easy (Nashville, 1975, dir. Robert Altman)

In this ensemble cast film, Altman had his actors write and perform their own songs. Keith Carradine plays the third member of a country folk trio who is a bit of a lothario. The women gathered in the Exit/In all believe the song is written for them, when in reality its for Lily Tomlin's character a gospel singer and married mother of two who has been having an affair with the singer. The way the camera works in conjuction with the actors' faces is beautiful.

22)You've Got Me? Who's Got You? (Superman: The Movie, 1979, dir. Richard Donner)

Its by no means the greatest film ever made, but it holds a sentimental place in my heart. And this moment, where Superman makes his public debut is just wonderful. It doesn't take itself too seriously and it doesn't need to be grim n' gritty or "badass". It's just a perfect superhero moment. And I must admit, I've used the flying statistic line many times.

23)Kiss (Cinema Paradiso, 1988, dir. Giuseppe Tornatore)

The film follows film director Salvatore Di Vita, who receives news that his old friend and the village's film projectionist, Alfredo, has died. Salvatore goes home and, through flashbacks, we learn of his friendship with the old man. Alfredo leaves Salvatore a film reel and when he returns home Salvatore watches it. It contains all of those moments deemed inappropriate by the Vatican, which Alfredo had to cut out. He gives them as a gift to his old friend in an incredibly beautiful moment.

24)Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Monty Python's The Life of Brian, 1979, dir. Terry Jones)

Probably one of the best film endings ever. Where else will you find a chorus of crucified messiahs singing about how life is a load of shit?

25) The Order of Things (Network, 1975, dir. Sidney Lumet)

This is one of the most prescient films ever made. Lumet and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky are modern day prophets. This scene has Howard Beale, a 1970s era Glenn Beck who has been allowed be all crazy up until he criticizes the capitalist system. He is brought to the corporate owner of the station who puts him in his place.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Snake Eyes

2010-06-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Snake Eyes (1998)
Starring Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino, Stan Shaw, John Heard, Luis Guzman

In the wake of Carlito's Way, De Palma was back on top and directed the very commercial Mission: Impossible. It was definitely a big break both for the director and in establishing Tom Cruise as an action star. It was also not very De Palma-esque, especially due to its globe trotting nature. Most De Palma films work because of their very small and local nature, so having character moving from Europe to Langley, Virginia between scenes was a bit jarring for those expecting a film more true to the director's aesthetic. It was an enjoyable movie though, but it was Snake Eyes that was set to stand as a return to the paranoid thrillers De Palma made in the 1980s (Body Double, Blow Out).

Rick Santoro (Cage) is an Atlantic City cop who has embraced the corruption of his city. It's fight night at the casino he frequents most and his old pal, Kevin Dunne (Sinise) is in attendance as the head of security for the attending Secretary of Defense. Rick gets a seat right next to Kevin's, but the latter is pulled away due to a security issue leaving Rick front and center when a Palestinian terrorist assassinates the secretary. Rick is immediately thrown into the midst of a conspiracy involving a strange young woman who was talking to the secretary moments before he was killed. The investigation leads Rick into retracing the steps of all the major players presenting in the arena at the time of the conspiracy.

Snake Eyes is a colossal failure, due in part to an unrewarding second half, when all the big reveals are made. However, the first half the film is basically a masterclass in cinematography. No matter how terrible the plots and acting are in a De Palma film you can always rely on the camera to be a star (Bonfire of the Vanities being the exception). The first scene of the film is a series of about eight Steadicam shots spliced together to make one long introductory scene leading up to the moment of the assassination. From there, as Rick interviews suspects and witnesses, we are taken back in time where we see the events play out from their POV, the classic first person camera shot De Palma so often employs. There is also an elaborate shot where characters are hiding and pursuing each other on a floor of the casino's hotel. The camera raises itself up to look down and begins panning over roofless rooms, allowing us to peek inside.

The conspiracy is incredibly predictable based on certain characters' actions and comments, so when we learn the truth its a big of a yawn. There's also a lot of plot points that stretch the film's credibility beyond anything acceptable. The motivation for the conspiracy is also fairly weak. I was reminded of Three Days of the Condor and how, despite its low points in the middle, it delivers a believable reason for conspiracy that makes sense within both our world and the universe of the film. The conspiracy in Snake Eyes is rather too elaborate for what is trying to be covered up. This over the top turn of events causes the film to become a bore and by the end its hard to really care about where any of these bland characters end up.

Next: De Palma goes back to some deep Hitchcock roots with Femme Fatale.

Criterion Fridays - Amarcord

2010-06-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

Amarcord (1973, dir. Federico Fellini)

Italy is an incredibly complex landscape. Since World War II they have been through dozens of governmental regimes and even before, there has been a centuries long intermingling of the Vatican and secular government. But these are the issues of adults, and as children we rarely are aware of the intermingling of government and our daily lives. We simply live our lives, and what stands out as monumental to us are those local moments. Federico Fellini returns to the Italy of his childhood here, life on a coastal Italian village where life is told through the observance of the seasons. What he creates is a small town masterpiece, on par with Our Town and Under Milkwood.

Beginning at the start of Spring, Amarcord (meaning "I Remember") follows the denizens of an unnamed village through the course of a single year. The story is told in a series of vignettes, almost like a collection of interconnected short stories that feature recurring characters. The core of the film focuses on Titta, an adolescent coming of age in this particular year, getting in trouble with schoolmates, dreaming about life outside of the constraints of the village, and lusting after the gorgeous women of the town. There is also Gradisca, the most beautiful woman in the village who is never seriously pursued by any of the men in town. There's Aurelio, Titta's father, a local businessman who may or may not be involved in anti-Mussolini activities.

The film is not political, rather anti-establishment of any sort. There is a wonderful series of scenes taking place near the end of the school year where we are presented with a parade of the most outlandish and absurd teachers. This is something Fellini has a real gift for in all his work: casting the most interesting looking actors, who defy the traditional movie star standards. Every actor in this film look like a wonderfully bizarre illustration in a storybook. The flights of fancy the teenaged characters take are also quite amusing, in particular one boy whom dreams of a wedding with his crush during a visit from one of Mussolini's lieutenants. They stand before a floral Mussolini head made for the parade and its mouth moves, delivering the wedding ceremony.

There are also moments of reality that have an equally magical effect. At one point, the townspeople migrate to their small rowboats to go out a few miles from the coast for a chance at glimpsing an massive Italian ocean liner, symbol to all of them in this moment of Italy's hollow power. Another powerful moment occurs during the winter when, during an impromptu snowball fight, large male peacock swoops down from the sky and perches on a fountain in the square. The way the bird is filmed was in such a strikingly brilliant way I found myself unsure of how such a shot was achieved. Amarcord has moments of great humor and aching sadness, and because of its honest love and criticism of its characters it stands as one of the more moving cinematic experiences I have had.

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 4

2010-06-23T14:23:00.000-05:00

16) Interrogation (The Dark Knight, 2008, dir. Christopher Nolan)

My favorite comic book based film, and an all around great movie. The screenplay is one of the tightest I've ever encountered and this is a great scene that really gets to the heart of the relationship between The Joker and Batman. The Joker is in love with Batman, not that he wants to have sex with him, but he is emotionally fulfilled by Batman's existence. Without Batman, The Joker would have no one worthy of him to combat.

17) What's In The Box (Se7en, 1995, dir. David Fincher)

This is one of those instances where every one is hitting their mark and it all comes together to make such a great film. I'm usually not a fan of Fincher, but the cinematography and editing here plus the actors all delivering make for one of the best climactic film scenes ever.

18) Regret - (Magnolia, 1999, dir. PT Anderson)

Jason Robards delivers a great performance, and you can tell he is speaking from years of his own personal experience filtered through this character. While, he is one of a multitude of amazing actors in Magnolia, his performance has always stood out to me.

19) Testing the Blood (The Thing, 1981, dir. John Carpenter)

One of the most intense horror films ever made, it takes an already great 1950s picture, and remakes it for the early 1980s. The Thing is one of the goriest movie monsters ever constructed and this is one of the few films where Carpenter is able to set the perfect tone and carry it throughout the entire piece.

20) Like Tears in Rain (Blade Runner, 1981, dir. Ridley Scott)

There will not be a film like Blade Runner for many years to come. The actors' strike allowed the art production team to have a considerable amount of time to prep and it shows. This scene in particular combines the neo-noir futurist look with the existential questions being asked thematically.

Newbie Wednesdays - Toy Story 3

2010-06-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

Toy Story (2010, dir. Lee Unkrich)
Starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Ned Beatty, Michael Keaton, Jodi Benson, Estelle Harris

In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term "The Uncanny Valley". Basically, it refers to the point when a robot or human facsimile (CG animated character) resemble real humans so closely it evokes a sense of revulsion in the viewer. CG animation walks that very fine line, and in the case of Robert Zemeckis' animated works (The Polar Express, Beowulf) it reaches the revolting atmosphere. This is where Pixar gets it right, in that it never tries to make its humans look like exact copies of humans. Instead, the real humanity in the film is infused in the inanimate who have a larger ability to express emotion than ever before. For me, Toy Story 3 marks a clear point in history where, in the right hands, CG animation is a clear challenger to live action cinema.

Andy is eighteen and about to head off to college. The time to cast out his toys, which have been long ignored anyway, has come. All but Woody end up in a trash bag destined for the attic, while the cowboy ends up in Andy college-bound boxes. With the fear of being separated from his pals, Woody makes a daring escape and goes to save Buzz and company who have accidentally been put out for the trash. They all avoid the landfill but end up in Sunnyside Daycare, which is ruled over by Losto Hugs Bear, a 80s relic. They also meet a host of other toys, more generic than specific products and engage in what is essential a prison break movie, with some very strong themes about aging and obsolescence threaded throughout.

The situation the toys are placed in is one that speaks across generations. The children, whom most assume the film is squarely marketed at, will see their own feelings of powerlessness reflected in the plight of the toys. When faced with the circumstances of simply moving to a new town all the way to dealing with the divorce of parents, children are without any say in where they go. The same theme is applied to children transitioning into adulthood, like Andy, who are pressured by society to abandon toys and play. The issues Andy is grappling with reflect a lot of those who were children when the first Toy Story came out. Bumping up another generation, the themes of a child leaving home are very palpable and those wistful feelings as days when your child was little and playful. Laurie Metcalf and the animators behind her character deliver a very short, but beautiful performance in the moment where she enters Andy's now empty bedroom. Finally, through Lotso we have the resentment of elderly and those who are left behind. Lotso has taken the moment he realized he was no longer wanted by his owner, and has allowed those feelings to become anger and rage, which is merely a form of hurt.

Pixar is a company that makes perfect films (I refuse to acknowledge Cars). They are writing scripts that are light years (no pun intended) richer and more complex than the majority of those shopped around Hollywood. The production staff also has a strong sense of creating rich worlds, they fill their universes with so many details that we want to inhabit them just a little bit longer. The Toy Story trilogy now stands a perfect trilogy, with themes that develop and mature just like Andy. The technical side of the animation has also evolved in a similar fashion. While buzz of Toy Story 4 has recently hit after the current release's box office success, but I hope the Pixar crew treads carefully in adding on to an already complete masterpiece.

Wild Card Tuesdays - Afterschool

2010-06-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Afterschool (2009, dir. Antonio Campos)
Starring Ezra Miller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jeremy Allen White, Addison Timlin

Stanley Kubrick, probably my favorite director of all-time, once said, "A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later." The kind of films Kubrick made the most closely followed this philosophy, 2001 comes to mind immediately, were not films that met the aesthetic of pleasurable cinema. They were meant to provoke a reaction, positive or negative, and I suspect the negative would have interested Kubrick more. This is not to say director Antonio Campos is working at the same level of Kubrick, but is definitely more interested in cinematic language than plot or characters or dialogue. This sort of film is never going to appeal to a mass audience, but that doesn't mean it isn't incredibly well made and through provoking.

Rob is a sophomore at Bryton, a fictional East Coast prep school where is a quiet, reclusive young man, preferring to spend his time watching viral videos and porn on his desktop computer. His interest in video leads him to joining the A/V Club after school pressures to participate in after-school activities. Amy, the girl he has a slight attraction to, is partnered with him to film B-roll exterior shots of the school for a collective club project. Amy can't make it to one session, so Rob goes it alone and happens to witness twin seniors stumbling into frame, bleeding profusely from their noses and mouths. Rob silently walks over to where they collapsed and that is where the teachers and other students find him. It turns out the girls died of drugs that had been tainted with rat poison. Add to the mix that Rob's roommate Dave is the known supplier in the dorms, and Rob must contemplate what he should do.

Don't for a second think this is going to be some sort of taut thriller. This is a incredibly meditative and slow paced film, that isn't about the death of the girls, rather it is about this young man and his personal psychosis. Rob is of a generation who filters reality through the pixelated grain of buffered video. We see portions of the film told through the lens of the digital video cameras handed out in class and through cell phone video. When Rob finally has a moment alone with Amy and they begin to get amorous, he mimics the actions he has seen on an incredibly misogynistic internet porn site. Amy is obviously shocked, but surprisingly not phased, as we can infer she has seen the same being from the same generation. Rob is an incredibly neutral protagonist, which has an odd effect on the viewer. While he does nothing to appear noble or heroic, I found myself rooting for him because of how I have been trained to view movies. Campos seems to be working to make us aware of this fact, that we have no reason to be on Rob's side.

Michael Stuhlbarg, who made an incredible turn as the lead in the Coen Brother's A Serious Man, plays Bryton's headmaster and is a darkly phony figure. Afterschool definitely draws parallels to the archetypal teen stories like A Catcher in the Rye and Heathers, where the maudlin sentiment of the adults is seen through the stark, cold eyes of adolescents. Stuhlbarg expresses false sympathy for Rob's condition after witnessing the deaths of the twins, and it is obvious every decision the dean makes is about saving face for the school, and making sure those parents who have influence are not offended. He reveals his true colors to Rob when the young man produces a video that does reflect the false regret and sympathy the dean wishes. The guise of a compassionate and sensitive educator melts away and he chastises Rob in an incredibly cruel manner.

Once again, I emphasize that this is not a film that will appeal to everyone. I suspect the audience that will "enjoy" the film will be quite small. It forces the audience to question their relationship between the tangible and the virtual, and beyond that how our view of the tangible can be distorted and effect the way we interact with the world around us. The ending of the film is incredibly chilling and unnerving and would do the great Kubrick proud, as it shrugs off the plausible and chooses to focus more on creating an honest tone. For those who are fans of Michael Haenke, I suspect parallels will be drawn between this and his contemporary classic, Cache.

DocuMondays - Dogtown & The Z-Boys

2010-06-21T12:54:00.000-05:00

Dogtown & The Z-Boys (2001, dir. Stacy Peralta)
Narrated by Sean Penn

As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I am by no means a sports enthusiast. However, even I know the names Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva, and Jay Adams. I can't say I knew a lot about them before I watched this documentary, but I did know they were big names in the world of skateboarding. In the early 1990s, skate culture was a big deal. I was about 9 or 10 years old and in all of child-focused media you had skateboard bound characters; from Nintendo's Skate or Die to the skateboard bound Michelangelo in TMNT. There was an entire aesthetic movement backing it as well: Chicano graffiti inspired neon clothing is what I remember most vividly. All of that started back in 1971 in South Venice Beach, California.

The story of the Zephyr Skate Team is the story of the class divide in America. The young men and women who skated on Zephyr were children of broken homes who lived in the "wrong side of the tracks" part of Venice Beach. The shoreline there was not one tourists ever visited and its most prominent landmark was the decrepit hulking skeleton of an abandoned theme park. The figures in the film began by surfing amongst the treacherous collapsing roller coasters and pier, and were forced to seek recreation elsewhere as the waves only came in at a very specific time of the day. As a lark they took up skateboarding, which had faded away as a fad in the mid-60s. The invention of polyurethane wheels, replacing the easily chipped and locking up clay ones, allowed the boards to grip the pavement and provide a smoother ride. Thus, many surfing techniques were brought in by the skaters. Basically, the modern skateboarding aesthetic is a direct result of the play these young people engaged in day after day.

The economic conditions of the key figures seemed to be one the largest driving forces. Many of the young men who skated on Zephyr came from homes where the fathers had left or, poor economic conditions resulted in, aggressive and abusive fathers. They found the Jeff Ho Surfboard Shop as a second home, where proprietors Jeff Ho, Skip Engblom, and Craig Stecyk encouraged the skaters to develop their own individual styles of the riding the boards. South Venice was a community envious of the North Venice mansions, and as fate would have it, a heavy drought struck California during the early 1970s. This left a lot of dried out pools and some of the more inventive skaters began to see the similarities between the flourishes and curves of the cement pools and the waves they were used to riding. And so, vertical skateboarding was born, skaters attempting to leave but one wheel touching the very rim of the bowl they rode in.

Much like a VH1 Behind the Music episode, we're given a traditional Rise and Fall story, but what makes it so remarkable is that the key players were all teenagers for both the Rise and Fall portions. Stacy Peralta came out as the most successful, going on to champion and mentor skaters like Tony Hawk. Tony Alva struck out as a very successful entrepreneur, becoming the first skater to break away from the companies and start his own. The saddest of the lot was Jay Adams, whom all the interviewees agree could have been the best in history, but he got caught up in a drug lifestyle that included crystal meth that sent him to some rather difficult places. The film does an excellent job of structuring its narrative, and does everything I want from a good documentary: It causes me to have interest in a subject I have thought little about, tells me an interesting story about very human people, and leaves me wanting to know more.

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 3

2010-06-20T18:36:00.000-05:00

11) Rhapsody in Blue (Manhattan, 1979, dir. Woody Allen)

New York is one of the great mythical cities, in that there is the New York that is real and there is the New York that is a fantasy of our minds. Allen captures this magical New York perfectly in the opening of Manhattan, using classic black and white photography as well as the signature George Gershwin tune.

12) Please Don't Tell My Mother (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1969, dir. Milos Forman)

This was one of the first films to showcase the acting chops of Jack Nicholson, but I like this scene because of the performances Louise Fletcher and Brad Dourif bring to the table. It is rare you see a scene so perfectly acted. All of these actors are at the top of their game.

13) Rabbits Stink! (Gummo, 1997, dir. Harmony Korine)

Its pretty impossible to explain Harmony Korine's Gummo. There really is no plot and the characters fade in and out. However, this scene reminded me of a lot of neighbor kids I knew growing up. So bizarre and so profane. Its gorgeous.

14) He Has His Father's Eyes (Rosemary's Baby, 1968, dir. Roman Polanksi)

Poor Rosemary has gone through a strange pregnancy where her husband and the neighbors in their new apartment are tending to her way too much. Finally, she has the child but when she wakes up its gone. She searches through the apartment, finds a secret door, and the truth about her child's true father.

15) I Know (Empire Strikes Back, 1980, dir. Irving Kershner)

This scene both tells us a lot about Han and had to have been incredibly nerve-wracking for those first audiences who saw it. Once again, John Williams score adds the perfect accent to the whole thing.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Carlito's Way

2010-06-19T10:21:00.002-05:00

Carlito's Way (1993)
Starring Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, Viggo Mortensen

In the wake of Bonfire of the Vanities, De Palma returned to Hitchcock-land with Raising Cain, an odd film about twins and multiple personalities that in many ways hearkened back to Sisters. It was another failure for the director, albeit not as quite a large scale one as Bonfire. With a sense of humility about him, De Palma embarked on adapting a novel by a federal judge called After Hours. The film would be renamed Carlito's Way (to distinguish it from Scorsese's After Hours) and would return De Palma to some themes and ideas from Scarface. However, instead of the rise and fall of a crimelord who is brash and aggressive, Carlito's would tell the story of a man once neck deep in crime, now trying to work his way out and go legit.

Carlito Brigante (Pacino) has just finished five years of a thirty year sentence. He has successfully been released when an appeal is issued proving the D.A. illegally made the recordings that sent him up the river. Now, with a re-evaluation of his life, Carlito has his sights set on raising enough cash to join a former inmate's car rental business in the Bahamas. He buys into a nightclub set up by Kleinfeld (Penn), his attorney and reconnects with his lost love (Miller). Along the way, he draws the ire of Benny Blanco (Leguizamo) an up and coming street tough and must question his loyalty to the ever more frenetic Kleinfeld, whose life in danger of being taken by angry mobsters. The entire time Carlito is trying to make the right choices, stay on the path of good, so that he and his girl can escape.

The first thing that struck me about this film is how phenomenally better and more modern it was than Bonfire. One thing that kept getting to me as I was watch Bonfire was how it felt very dated. Typically if a film is set in the 1980s you're supposed to feel that through the set design, tone, etc. Bonfire pulled it off in a way that made the picture feel too out of touch with any sort of universal truth. Carlito, on the other hand,despite being set in the 1970s, feels like an incredibly modern film. I think a lot of this is due in part to it being subject matter that De Palma is much more capable of handling. The director himself admitted he was planning on turning it down because on first glance he saw it as a Scarface retread. When he finally sat down to read it, he saw the film was going to be the antithesis of Scarface.

The acting here is a mixed bag, though. Sean Penn as Kleinfeld is spot on. He never exaggerates his character but is able to get across the transition from cool, calm and collected to on the verge of a nervous breakdown without breaking a sweat. It's interesting to note, that at this point in his career, Penn had all but retired from acting to pursue directing (He was working on The Crossing Guard with Jack Nicholson at the time). His return to the screen was a big deal at the time and his performance definitely caused some people to encourage him to keep acting. It's a strange thing for people of my generation to think about, as I was not aware of Carlito at all on its original release and have grown up with a viewpoint that you can count on Penn to be in all sorts of Oscar bait type pictures. On the other hand, Pacino nails the character of Carlito but has a persistently annoying accent problem. In his attempt to conjure up a Puerto Rican flair to his voice he ends up sounding at times like a Southerner, and then at others a bizarre interpretation of a stereotypical New Yorker. Accent aside, this a is a complete 180 from Scarface. Carlito is incredibly likable and charming, and it is impossible for you not to root for him to escape.

All the typical De Palma tricks are on display, and while they felt forced in Bonfire, here they feel exciting and fresh. There's some great looking deep focus shots, just a little POV, and some wonderful Steadicam work, particularly in the final scene in Grand Central. The editing in the film is also some of the best of any De Palma movie. I found myself literally clutching my fists in anxiousness during the final tense moments of the film, which could not have been possible if it was wasn't for some stellar camerawork and editing. While plots and actors may fail the director at times, his camera is his most loyal friend and you can always count on him to know exactly how to shoot a scene that gets the most out of it.

Next: De Palma does Mission: Impossible and closes out the 90s with Snake Eyes

Criterion Fridays - Loves of a Blonde

2010-06-18T21:22:00.001-05:00

Loves of a Blonde (1965, dir. Milos Forman)

My familiarity with director Milos Forman comes mainly from his work in English language cinema (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Man in the Moon), but I have been aware for a long time of the movies he honed his craft with in his native Czechoslovakia. I didn't know much about them, other than from reviews and criticisms they were akin to the French New Wave youth culture movies, but with a more anti-authoritarian bite. One thing I've found in art that is hard to translate between languages and culture is humor. Jokes are a product of the experiences and philosophies of a specific group of people, and the broader the joke (i.e. slapstick comedy) the larger the audience you can appeal to. Humor of language or subtle situations is much harder to get a foreign audience to laugh at. However, Forman conquers that challenge with expertise.

Hana lives and works in a rural Czech village whose economy revolves around a textile factory. The factory employs primarily women so the demographics are 16:1 in favor of women. The factory owner petitions the military to station some soldiers there as a way to provide some relief for the tension building amongst the workers. They get sent a group of thirty-something, slightly balding reservists and most of the girls decide to just go with the flow, despite their disappointment. Hana avoids the leers of these men, most of whom are married already, and ends up in the room of a visiting musician more her age. The problem with Hana is that every week she seems to have a new true love and these dreams and wishes get the best of her.

I found myself laughing many times at Loves, particularly in moments where the dialogue was greatly improvised. A trio of reservists looking to lure in some of the young women reveal themselves as inept buffoons as they waste most of their time debating how many of them should approach the table where their prey is sitting. They send a bottle of wine over, but it gets delivered to the wrong table and they tell it to take it from the women who believe they were picked. Soon after, one of the reservists slips off his wedding ring, its kicked across the dance floor and under the table of the spurned women which he must now crawl under.

It's rare that I find a film from Europe during this period which doesn't have sequences that seem to drag and pull me out of the picture. Here I was completely engaged from the start, due in part to some very skillful editing and language-transcendent humor. The circumstances that these characters experience are universal to all people: unwanted affections from suitors, allowing oneself to get caught up in what you think is love, and a general sense of dissatisfaction with mundane and repetitive life. Once again, Forman delivers a highly entertaining film with truly funny comedy.

Newbie Wednesdays - MacGruber

2010-06-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

MacGruber (2010, dir. Jorma Taccone)
Starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Val Kilmer, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph

It began with The Blues Brothers and it was a long time before another one was made. Then with Wayne's World, followed by The Coneheads, Night at the Roxbury, Superstar, and The Ladies' Man. The idea of adapting a skit from Saturday Night Live series is not new, but never has the source material been so brief. MacGruber is originally a thirty second bumper to commercials, so the idea of making a feature film around the character is a bit of an oddity. It's also a very simply parody of the MacGyver television series, which itself is almost twenty years past. So how does this longshot stack up as a full length movie?

The premise borrows its plot from films like Rambo, with MacGruber (Forte) as a former Pentagon agent who has been living in a monastery for the last decade after the tragic death of his bride. When the villainous Dieter Von Cunth (Kilmer) steals a Russian nuclear missile, MacGruber is called back into action alongside straight arrow Lt. Dixon Piper (Phillippe) and his former sidekick Vicki St. Elmo (Wiig). The trio engage in a series of episodic attempts to either get in contact with Von Cunth and foil his plans. These typically involve Piper suggesting a reasonable military tactic, while MacGruber does something outlandish (i.e. hopping naked with a piece of celery sticking out of his butt). The plot hits all the expected points, and delivers a very hard R-rated comedy.

The sources being parodied here are done by people who know those sources well. Director Taccone, part of The Lonely Island and a writer for SNL, most definitely grew up watching the awful Golan-Globus military action films of the 1980s (Death Wish, Cobra, American Ninja). From that perspective, its an amusing film but nothing terribly special. I believe I chuckled once or twice, but for the most part I felt myself slogging through the picture, simply trying to make it to the end. Of all the current cast of SNL, Will Forte is far and away my favorite, but when he is constrained by SNL material he's never as funny as he could be. Such is the case here, the jokes feel very lazy and the payoffs are never clever or surprising. In the end, its a case of a flimsy premise being stretched beyond its abilities to hold together, resulting in an incredibly disappointing and forgettable film.

Wild Card Tuesdays - Three Days of the Condor

2010-06-15T16:11:00.000-05:00

Three Days of the Condor (1975, dir. Sydney Pollack)
Starring Robert Reford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow, John Houseman

In the wake of Watergate in the early 1970s, a trend began in films made by younger directors towards anti-government conspiracy thrillers. You had the "based on a true story" variety like All The President's Men, the naturalist conspiracy like The Candidate, and the more Hitchcock-ian conspiracy in The Conversation. Here Sydney Pollack takes a crack at adapting a novel to the screen about a man on the more paperwork side of the CIA. It begins with some intriguing moments, but slowly devolves into a formulaic studio picture, only to deliver a very prescient twist.

Joe Turner (Redford) works for the American Literary Society, a front for a group of translators who spend their days literally reading everything and looking for any oddities that could be a way of encoding messages. Turner has discovered such an oddity, a book that was only published in Arabic, Dutch, and Spanish with no logically reason why. He receives a message from his superior telling him the Agency believes it is not of importance. Later that same day a group of men show up and kill all of Turner's coworkers, while he escapes, now on the run. As he delves further into the conspiracy he learns that there is possible a subgroup within the CIA and that he has stumbled upon some vitally important secrets. He uses his technical knowledge and book smarts to stay ahead of his pursuers and eventually learns the reason why his coworkers were murdered.

The conspiracy part of the film is spot on and kept me very engaged. The part of the film that I zoned out during was the very forced love story between Redford and Dunaway. Dunaway was a woman he simply kidnaps to use her car and stay in her apartment. For some reason they inexplicably have sex the first night they meet and she helps me out, despite the implausibility of a person in this situation would do such a thing. Other than the forced romantic subplot (methinks I smell studio intervention), Dunaway has some interesting things to do and is able to move the conspiracy plot along by helping Redford identify the man behind his misery.

Max Von Sydow's German mercenary is a character interesting enough to have his own film, and delivers an interesting speech near the end of the film about the peacefulness of his life, and how his job has a sort of meditative quality. Robertson does a great job as Redford's callous superior and gets to deliver a chilling warning to Redford in the film's final scene. Redford has uncovered the truth of the book translation and why his colleagues were murdered at this point, and Robertson talks about the coming decades in America, and how the unscrupulous actions of the CIA in the present won't be judge by the citizens in the future. Definitely worth a view and will make you think about the state of the world in comparison.

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 2

2010-06-14T16:25:00.000-05:00

6) Waiting For a Train (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969, dir. Sergio Leone)

Wordless, with a soundtrack provided by found objects in the setting. A squeaky windmill, a dripping water tower, the steady rhythm of a steam engine. It provides the perfect introduction to the film's protagonist, Harmonica (Charles Bronson).

7) Getting Baptized (Ed Wood, 1994, dir. Tim Burton)

Hack director Wood has gotten financing from an L.A. church. One of the conditions for the money to come through is that the entire cast and crew of Plan Nine from Outer Space will be baptized. The unaffected homosexual producer Bunny Breckenridge (Bill Murray) takes the hefty spiritual ritual with little thought in a cleverly funny moment. This is also Burton's masterpiece in my opinion.

8) Flowers (Harold and Maude, 1971, dir. Hal Ashby)

Ashby is one of the greats of the 1970s, and this scene featuring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, and the music of Cat Stevens is a picture of perfect composition. The transition from the field of flowers to the military cemetery is a very beautiful one.

9) He'll Keep Calling Me (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1989, dir. John Hughes)

This scene is a perfect summation of the profound indecision and anxiety Cameron suffers from. Throughout the film, he's a character who is simply pushed around by his off screen father or by Ferris or by authority in general. This is every thing going on in his brain.

10) Make the Sun Rise (Black Orpheus, 1959, dir. Marcel Camus)
Set during Carnival in Brazil, the film retells the mythic story of Orpheus and Eurydice through an Afro-Brazilian guitarist and the woman he loves. In this final scene, we see that the tragic story of these lovers is part of a cycle and this children are beginning to play down a path that is both beautiful, but painful.

DocuMondays - Objectified

2010-06-14T16:01:00.000-05:00

Objectified (2009, dir. Gary Hustwitt)

Take the toothpick. There is a particular design, Japanese in origin, where the toothpick had a designed head, almost like ridges. This head can be broken off as a signal that the toothpick is in use, always a good thing. It can also be used as a rest for the toothpick so that the point doesn't touch any surfaces, like so. I doubt many of us view toothpicks with much contemplation on a daily basis, yet we use them fairly frequently. Objectified is a documentary looking at all those aspects of an object we spend zero time thinking about, but the interviewees has devoted their lives to examining.

Director Hustwitt, responsible for the similar and interesting documentary Helvetica, explores a very modernist approach to design. Apple is mentioned many times as a company on the cutting edge of premier, sleek design. One on the interviewees is Jonathan Ive, the man behind the iMac in all its iterations and talks about the focus on monitor tube of the first iMac to the now self-contained flat screen monitor of the current. We see the raw aluminum slate that is processed to create the frame of the MacBook laptop and Ive emphasizes all the thought that went into these particular materials in this particular shape, and how the average user will never think or realize this.

While there is much focus on industrial design, many of the commentators talk about the need to create new sustainable objects while simultaneously learning to find appreciation in the objects we already have. One of the interesting ideas in relation to sustainability is presented by Karim Rashid, a rather flamboyment and dynamic designer. Rashid posits that to solve the problem of landfills brimming over with garbage we design objects that are disposable from the start, and he includes high end electronics like cell phones and laptops. I have to say its intriguing to think of a cell phone with a high quality cardboard shell that could easily be tossed out and its sim chip placed in a new shell for cheap. Or even a laptop where you boot from a thumb drive and the computer itself is merely a way to interact with the data on that drive and access the internet.

Critic Rob Walker was the most enjoyable to listen to, as he presented the side of realizing that the objects one has already accrued contain more emotional value to the user than the Now object which is new and we are told we must have. He presents the scenario where your house is on fire and the things you grab as you run out are not those things that scored particularly well in a review you read somewhere, rather they are things that inform you about yourself in someway. Walker also discusses the corporate marketing around objects that he believes causes the quality of materials to be downgraded. He refers to this idea of desiring new as the New Now, which is designed to make the previous New Now become Then. All in all, a lot of interesting ideas presented by people who are experts in every sense of the word about design.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - The Bonfire of the Vanities

2010-06-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Starring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Kim Catrall, Morgan Freeman, Saul Rubinek, F. Murray Abraham

And so, all great filmmakers must descend into the bowels of hell from time to time. It's hard for us to understand just how terrible this film is now. Oh yes, Hanks is certainly acting in a way that comes across as acting. And Willis is forced to deliver voice over narration that both shoves the story forward and sounds like he has difficulty saying it. But the utter disaster that is The Bonfire of the Vanities was both as a completed picture and the behind the scenes production fiasco. What was thrown up on the screen was a watered down version of a biting satire, that somehow manages to still offend every major racial group and still feel like the studio was pulling back and watering it down.

The novel by Tom Wolfe, was an attempt to skewer the 1980s greed culture and the rise of a more and more tabloid-influenced media. You have Sherman McCoy (Hanks), a Wall Street financial wunderkind who is sneaking behind his wife's back (Catrall) to have an affair with socialite Maria (Griffith). During one tryst the lovers take a wrong turn and end up in the Bronx where, with Maria at the wheel, they end up running over a black youth who was attempting to rob them. Sherman thinks they should report it to the police, but Maria convinces him otherwise. Cue an Al Sharpton-inspired preacher, opportunistic D.A., and drunken reporter (Willis) and the hunt is on to catch the WASP in the Mercedes who ran over the poor young man. All of these cynical characters feel set to get their comeuppance in deliciously vicious way...however, it never happens.

The names originally batted around in pre-production color a very different film. William Hurt was originally looked at to play McCoy. Jack Nicholson and John Cleese were named as playing the role that went to Willis. Walter Matthau was brought up when casting the judge, but he wanted more money than they were willing to spend. And nineteen year old newcomer Uma Thurman has been up for the role of Maria. These people in these roles would have presented a much better film, not perfect, and they would have fit the types they were meant to play. Hurt would have played into the Ivy League, born into money mold much better than Hanks, who has always come across a more everyman than anything else. And anyone would have been better than Willis as the reporter, who seems to never know what he is doing and simply plays "smarmy".

De Palma throws us some cinematography bones: steadicam shot, quick POV, deep focus. It all comes across as him jumping up and down, shouting "Hey, remember I'm directing this!" Otherwise this is any other lofty studio picture trying to tackle the race issues of the early 1990s and come across as "edgy". I was reminded of Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon (also released in 1990) which is on the other end of the spectrum from this picture. In Grand Canyon, Kasdan seems to tread as if he is walking on ice while broaching the issue of black-white relations and so the film never feels like it comes to any point. Here, we have a film that seems to be promising its going to go where no one else will while constantly tugging at the reins. The final courtroom scene snuffs out any chance that the film will end on a provocative note, as the judge descends from his bench and delivers a sermon to the characters and to us. The entire didactic droning feels like it should have ended with an American flag unfurling behind him and tiny sparklers appearing from out of frame. De Palma was at a major low point here...but he was about to prove he could deliver a monumental picture.

Next up: Carlito's Way

Criterion Fridays - Knife in the Water

2010-06-11T11:39:00.000-05:00

Knife in the Water (1962, dir. Roman Polanksi)
Starring Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz

It's funny how across the Atlantic and behind the Iron Curtain, things were much the same in both the United States and Eastern Europe in the 1960s. If you are familiar with Mad Men, then you have seen the sort of character Niemcszyk is playing. He has the slicked back hair, the suit, he's a professional. Yet, he is also a Hemingway-esque macho man, who isn't going to let some young upstart get away with thinking he matters. Polanksi's first splash on the international scene is a fable-like story about some archetypal characters and relationships.

Andrezj (Niemczyk) and his wife are taking a drive through the countryside, on their way to their boat for a day of sailing. The tension is palpable in the care, neither speaks, until it is broken by a young hitchhiker standing in the middle of the road. Andrezj can tell that his wife is momentarily attracted to the young man so he offers to give him a ride, and eventually invites him onto their boat. This is all part of a disturbing psychological mind game is playing with his wife, using the hitchhiker to prove a point. As the young man flips between adolescent mood swings and is manipulated with ease by Andrezj, the older gentleman remains calm and poised, right up to the finale where both the characters and the audience are left wondering what happened and how these characters move on.

The rivalry between the two men is incredibly realistic. If you have been around immature adolescents (and sadly grown men even) you have seen the way they can get caught in a playful game of oneupmanship that devolves into a primitive fist fight. Through out the film, Andrezj intentionally puts the hitchhiker in a position of submission, giving him commands and emphasizing important maritime rules, while simultaneously breaking these same rules moments later in a bid to shove it in the young man's face. Because of the wife's initial flirtation with the hitchhiker we assume this is all about her, but I found that she recedes into the background till the final moments of the film. Instead, these young men are simply in a battle for alpha male status, not over a woman, but just in terms of their own relationship.

The wife is very enigmatic character, behaving without reaction for most of the film. She's first presented as a prim and proper type, silent, not in subservience to Andrezj but in defiance of him. Once on the boat, she goes about her work mechanically, bringing about noshes when they are expected, preparing the soup when it is needed, battening down the hatches at the approach of a thunderstorm. Very subtly, her inner sexuality is revealed until she is completely nude near the end of the picture. In this moment, she defies Andrezj in a very interesting way that further pushes him down, keeping him from attaining the status of alpha.

In such a simple plot, lies an infinitely complex series of ideas and themes. In many ways, this would work as a companion piece to the similarly psychological and deceptively simplistic Funny Games. Both films are exploring weighty ideas using a framework that is easy for any audience to understand.

Newbie Wednesdays Bonus! - Get Him to the Greek

2010-06-09T21:59:00.002-05:00

Get Him to the Greek (2010, dir. Nicholas Stoller)
Starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Elizabeth Moss, Rose Byrne, Colm Meany

There is the way Apatow films are perceived by those that haven't seen them, and then the what the films actually are. Most people who don't see these movies discount them as gross out frat boy movies, and that's sad because they will be missing a rather poignant film about relationships. That's what the Apatow circle has done an amazing job of, making movies about very real relationships. The women in this film are not harpies or shrews, they are not holding these men back. Instead, they are equal partners in the mistakes and travails of our main characters.

Aaron (Hill) is a young music executive tasked with the job of getting washed up rocker Aldous Snow (Brand) from London to L.A. for an anniversary concert at the Greek. Aaron is also dealing with his live-in girlfriend Daphne (Moss) who is in the midst of med school and has just got a transfer to Seattle. Aaron leaves LA on a sour note with her, but quickly gets involved in the insanity that surrounds the hard drinking, drugged out Snow. Aaron is constantly impeded by Snow in getting the man first to an appearance on the Today, and then to the Greek theater. They are sidetracked by Snow's proclivities for sex and drugs and Aaron usually ends up on the losing end of this. He drinks absinthe unaware of what it is and ends up a buffoon in a nightclub. He is forced to store Aldous' heroin on his person in a rather uncomfortable place. He is injected with a needle full of adrenaline and goes on a rampage in a strip club.

The character of Aldous Snow first appeared in 2007's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, there he was put together, Zen-like sage. Here his career has seen a downturn, he's lost the woman he loves, and his career seems to be over. This version of Snow has much more in common with Brand's own life. If you have read his autobiography Booky Wook, then you know that Brand suffered from a drug and sex addiction. He also has some major emotional issues when it comes to his father. Snow's father also plays a significant role in the film, as a figure responsible for much of his son's current state. Snow also has a more successful ex (Byrne) who is at first presented as an absurd character, but when we meet her later, comes across as someone who has moved past the gutter Snow seems to be stuck in.

Every performance here feels very unforced and natural, and I think that's why Apatow's productions are so enjoyable. Every one feels like they are these characters, the lines roll effortlessly from them and never feel like actors acting. The friendship between Aaron and Snow feels genuine, and this comes from the fact that in real life Brand is a very open and friendly person, as glimpsed in his many British television series. Director Stoller is also not afraid to end Snow in a place that doesn't wrap everything up perfectly. Snow doesn't get the girl, he ends up going on stage right after receiving a horribly painful injury, and tells Aaron in a heartbreaking scene that this is the only thing he has left that makes him feel like a good person. In an odd sort of way Snow is a comedic version of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. They are both playing characters based more on themselves than any fictional creation.

Newbie Wednesdays - I Love You Phillip Morris

2010-06-09T13:57:00.001-05:00

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009, dir. Glenn Ficara and John Requa)
Starring Jim Carrey, Ewan MacGregor, Leslie Mann

Audiences love a great scoundrel. Con men able to take on the persona of figures of power, then use that power to one up "The Man" have been archetypal figures. Most recently Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can proved again that audiences love a good scam. At last year's Sundance Film Festival, audiences were shown I Love You Phillip Morris, a feature film based on the true story of a man who never met a swindle he didn't like. Since then the feature has struggled to find distribution and has been thrown around the schedule by studios frightened of its content, finally with a July 30th release date it looks like the general public will finally get to see what is a surprisingly clever and funny picture.

Steven Russell (Carrey) was an easy going clean cut suburbanite with a beautiful wife and daughter and steady job. However, he was hiding his sexuality from his wife, sneaking off for trysts with men when he had the chance. This all changed with a car accident where he had an epiphany. He was honest with his wife and left Texas for Florida where he met a handsome Latin man and showered him with gifts. Steven also had another secret: he was a damn good conman. He resorts to purposefully injuring himself in department stores and using fake credit cards to finance his life. The authorities catch up to Steven and he is tossed in prison where he meets the titular Phillip Morris (MacGregor). Steven falls madly in love and makes it his mission to get both he and Phillip out of prison. What follows are a series of scams that are so outlandish its hard to believe this is all based on a true story, and that the real Steven Russell was actually able to do these things.

It's very interesting that the screenwriters of the snarky and vicious Bad Santa, Ficara and Requa both penned and directed this incredibly funny and, in certain moments, tear-inducingly poignant film. There is definitely the self-aware and sarcastic tone of Bad Santa present, but the characters here feel much more fleshed out and sympathetic. The film never shies away from the sexuality of its leads but it also doesn't make them spokesmen for the LGBT community. These are just two people in love who are living their lives. That's not to say the more prudish elements in our society will be lured into the theater. The scene where we learn Russell is gay involves him in the middle of coitus with one of his late night trysts.

The picture suffers in the structure department, though. It appears that Ficara and Requa wanted to be as true to the chronology of events as possible, and real life just doesn't translate into a traditional cinematic story arc. The film comes off as episodic and a series of acts: act one is Steven's coming to terms with his sexuality, act two is Steven meeting Phillip, and so on. I have to say the film is better than I expect it would have been if its original director, Gus Van Sant, has stayed on. As much as I love Van Sant, I can't see him creating a film as entertaining as this. While it does it entertain, Carrey refrains from being schitck-y and is more in line with his performance in Man in the Moon. It's inevitable that the film is going to lack the publicity push it deserves and be dumped at the end of the summer in theaters, so if you have the chance to see it definitely go.

Wild Card Tuesdays - The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans

2010-06-08T18:36:00.001-05:00

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (2009, dir. Werner Herzog)
Starring Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Xzibit, Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif, Michael Shannon

At one point in this film, I swear Nicolas Cage was attempting to channel Tony Clifton, the obnoxious lounge singer persona adopted by Andy Kaufman on occasion. This unofficial sequel to the 1992 Bad Lieutenant film is such a bizarre piece of cinema that lives somewhere between classic film noir and surrealist Lynch land. And there really is no other actor who could bring the right level of insanity to this role other than Cage. Even when its impossible for the audience not to react with laughter, Cage is going to keep pushing the boundaries of what we will tolerate.

The film begins in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Terence McDonagh and his partner, Stevie Pruit find a prisoner in the jail with water up to his neck. Instead of rushing to help they place bets on how long it will take the man to drown. Eventually, McDonagh decides to jump in and help, however the water is to shallow and he injures his back. McDonagh is a scumbag. He has the officer running the evidence room sneaking a cocktail of drugs out for him, he stalks college aged kids leaving nightclubs to confiscate their drugs, he has a prostitute girlfriend he seems in no rush to help get out of the business, and he's just an all around asshole. A crime scene is discovered where an entire family has been killed execution style. McDonagh begins to uncover that the father was dealing drugs on another man's territory and attempts to solve the case using methods that pretty much violate every law on the books.

Director Herzog employs some awfully strange choices in making this film. McDonagh's drug use causes him to have hallucinations that the audience gets to see. During surveillance on a suspect's house he swears there are two iguanas on the table while the other officers simply give each other confused looks. Later, after a mobster is killed Cage tells the killer to shoot again because "his soul is still dancing", reflected by a break dancer spinning in the middle of the room. There are other pieces of scenery that keep that wacked out feeling continuing through the film. Actors like Brad Dourif, Michael Shannon, and Fairuza Balk add that twisted atmosphere to every scene they are in.

McDonagh is constantly on the go. There isn't a single scene where we see him in his home, ready to fall asleep for the night. Instead he is always wheeling and dealing, playing one party against the other in incredibly flimsy ways that you know are going to catch up to him sooner or later. He owes thousands to bookie Dourif and tries dealing drugs out of the evidence room to pay it off, while trying to avoid the suspicion of his superiors. There really isn't a film comparable to the insanity of this one and if you are a film lover like me, whom finds a sick enjoyment in Nicolas Cage's frantic nature then you desperately need to pick this up.

My 40 Favorite Film Moments - Part 1

2010-06-07T18:26:00.000-05:00

This month I will be looking at my favorite moments in movies. These are not necessarily the best ever in films, but they are my personal favorites. In no particular order, here we go:

1) Let Me Out (Young Frankenstein, 1974, dir. Mel Brooks)

Gene Wilder is at his best when he goes from calm to frantic in a split second. His red-faced blue blanket tirade from The Producers is a gorgeous moment. This one however goes up there as one of my all time faves. Wilder as the nephew of Victor Frankenstein shines. In this scene we see him go from calm, to manic, to desperate, and finally to confident in his macabre heritage.

2) Mike Yanagita (Fargo, 1996, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

Two actors here who deserve a lot more credit. Frances McDormand won the Oscar for her role of Marge Gunderson, but this scene also showcases the chops of Steve Park. Park is able to create a three dimensional character in a single scene of this film, its amazing what he does. Its hard not to imagine the life of Yanagita after watching this. A powerful example of what happens when good writing and acting are paired up.

3) Oh, Are They? (Rushmore, 1998, dir. Wes Anderson)

The film that really broke Anderson out and still one of his best. Max Fischer (Schwartzmann) turns a post opening night dinner into a farce when his love interest invites her male nurse friend along. Would be nice if Anderson tried to go back to his more comedic roots, not that his current work is bad.

4) Binary Sunset (Star Wars, 1977, dir. George Lucas)

It's a short scene, but it says a lot. The dual suns reinforce the alien nature of this world, the lighting sets the perfect tone as Luke Skywalker stares out across the vast landscape of Tatooine, and the music gets across his desire to explore. Simple and perfect.

5) Come Play With Us, Danny (The Shining, 1980, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

A perfect horror movie scene. The music and cinematography are in perfect unison and there isn't much more to say other than, experience the scene yourself.

DocuMondays - We Live in Public

2010-06-07T17:21:00.000-05:00

We Live in Public (2009, dir. Ondi Timoner)
Featuring Josh Harris

Josh Harris is much smarter than you. He is also likely more insane than you, as well. This documentary by director Ondi Timoner (also behind the great docu DiG! about the Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols) follows a near prophetic vision of the internet and privacy that was unleashed from the mind of the aforementioned Josh Harris. The ideas he would present, for himself an experiment born out of curiosity, would shape the concepts of social networking and cultivation of user information as a commodity. The way Facebook works now is indebted to the research of Harris, a man who is unknown by the very executives whom run companies that wouldn't exist without him.

In 1980, Josh Harris was a low level researcher in New York City. He attended a conference where the idea of computers being networked globally was being discussed and from this he began to think of how this could completely change the way people run their lives. He founded Jupiter, a company focused on surveying to gathering information on how people would use the internet. From there he developed the concept of public chat rooms which he sold to Compuserve. He was the first to think of making the internet a replacement for television and started Pseudo TV, back when streaming video was a blocky nightmare. Investors liked the idea but by 1999 Harris had become bored and was behaving in a more increasingly erratic manner. His next venture was a piece of performance art/social experiment where around a hundred people signed up to live in a subterranean village Harris built.

Before they could join though, they had to undergo extensive psychological testing, not to ensure their stability in the community but to help feed periodic interrogations that would be held during their stay. Everyone slept in Japanese style pods which had both a television and a closed circuit camera. Every channel was simply another pod. The bathrooms, showers, dining room, entertainment venues, simply everywhere was wired with cameras. The psychological effect it had was at first detachment by the citizens of the village and then a air of insanity took over. The experiment was busted on Jan. 1, 2000 after rumors spread that it was a Heaven's Gate type cult. At this point, Josh and his girlfriend at the time set up cameras all throughout their loft and launched a 24 hour stream of every facet of their life online. This experiment culminated in Harris physically assault said girlfriend on camera when she refused to have sex with him.

From there he fell victim to the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, left New York City and ended up buying an apple farm. He tried to reinsert his "brand" into the current online climate but was met with executives of social networking sites who had no idea who he was. Harris is shown as being incredibly detached from others. His mother was on her deathbed and, instead of physically visiting, he recorded his message to her and mailed the tape, which arrived too late. His most formative experiences seem to have been bonding with virtual families via the television of the 1960s and 70s. Gilligan's Island was a highly influential element in his life and he seems to transpose both the character of Mrs. Howell and his own mother onto a bizarre personality he would some times take on called Luvvey.

Harris ideas about people willingly giving over their information and their privacy has come true in the form of the 24 hour tweet culture we're experiencing. He mentions that Warhol was right about the fifteen minutes of fame, however, he add people want that fifteen minutes every day. The documentary is an excellent examination of how we got to a moment where identity and privacy are typically forfeit when it comes to online culture. Through Harris' insane experiments we can see that it is not so much about the technology as it is about a distance our culture has taken on in relation to each other, long before the internet.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Casualties of War

2010-06-05T18:36:00.000-05:00

Casualties of War (1989)
Starring Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John C. Reilly, John Leguizamo, Don Harvey, Thuy Thu Le

Coppola made Apocalypse Now. Stone made Platoon. And De Palma made Casualties of War. At the end of the 1980s De Palma was secure in his place as a Hollywood film director. When he had been closing out the 1970s he was still immersed in Hitchcoclk style thrillers. A decade later he's made a gangster epic (Scarface), a 1930s historical crime film (The Untouchables), and a Vietnam War flick. Despite the change in venue and content, there are the same cinematographic trademarks (deep focus and POV tracking shot). But how does this film shape up next to the other great Vietnam War flicks?

PFC Ericksson (Fox) is out on patrol with his unit when they are ambushed. He's standing over a Viet Cong tunnel and falls half way in. As a Cong soldier inches closer, knife in teeth, Ericksson is saved in the nick of time by Meserve (Penn). Later, they both witness their commanding officer getting gunned down and Meserve takes over. He becomes obsessed with revenge and leads his group of five men to a village where they kidnap a young girl with the intent to rape and savage her. Ericksson is frozen as he must decide whether to protect this innocent or honor the bonds of his military brotherhood.

Casualties is by no means a perfect film, but it is a surprisingly mature film for De Palma, where he seems to be balancing his camera flourishes with a thoughtful look at the nature of war. There are still some cringe inducing line deliveries and Penn's Maserve is played a little too broad for my taste. I did like Meserve's speech about hating the Army. Often in pop culture, the soldier who brutalizes for pleasure is made out to be a dedicated troop. It feels more realistic that such a sociopath would despise the lack of self-decision that comes with the military. Once Meserve is out of the eye of his superiors he adopts his own sense of law. Ericksson provides a balance as a soldier who appreciates the idea of duty and rank. When Ericksson goes to report what he has seen he goes through the proper channels of authority. Meserve tries to get revenge under the radar.

De Palma ends things in a way I didn't expect. Moments before the credits rolled, I felt the film hinting at a possible dramatically violent finale, but then it ends in an ambiguous way. The message of the film is hammered way to bluntly, though. De Palma does an excellent job of telling this story in a clear, comprehensible way and he uses some interesting technical skills. At the end I felt a certain dissatisfaction with product. It's not as high an artistic achievement as Apocalypse Now and its doesn't have the emotional weight of Platoon. It is a well made piece of cinema with some very enjoyable acting, but definitely doesn't score as high as some of De Palma's other films for me.

Next: The first big disaster, Bonfire of the Vanities.

Jolly Good Thursdays - Five Minutes of Heaven

2010-06-03T17:03:00.002-05:00

Five Minutes of Heaven (2009, dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel)
Starring Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt

There is no collective event as traumatizing and as haunting in the United States as the conflict in Northern Island has affected those people. In 1975, Ireland was under siege by a civil war where neighbor killed neighbor. The IRA killed those who were Protestants and loyal to the British, while the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) would kill Catholics who were disloyal to the Empire. These murders were typically carried out by adolescent males, coerced into proving their loyality to their faction by terrorist cell leaders. In many ways, this is a parallel to the Islamic fundamentalist terrorism today; young men too dumb to know better end up dying or killing another. Over time, if they live, the glory fades and they are left with the emptiness of what they believed was a great act of glory.

Alistair Little was 16 when he killed James Griffin, 19. Alistair wanted to prove himself to Ulster and heard about a Protestant friend being hassled by Catholics. He and a group of boys steal a car, get ahold of a gun, and show up on James' doorstep, shooting the young man dead. Witness to this crime is Joe Griffin, James' 11 year old brother. Thirty years later, the BBC wants to put together a documentary that culminates in Alistair and Joe meeting. Alistair has served 12 years in prison for burglary and appears to have worked towards getting young men out of the situation he ended up in. Joe has agreed to meet but is both apprehensive and enraged at the prospect of finally confronting his brother's killer. For the rest of his childhood, Joe was blamed for not doing something to save his brother by their mother, and now the grown man wants to unleash all of this pent up rage on Alistair.

Five Minutes plays out in a very unexpected way, primarily because it's structured as a four-act play. Each act isn't contained in a single set but is contained by a certain focus. The first act is the recreation of the murder in 1975, the second act is the build up to the documentary meeting between the two men, and so on. The acting weight is focused squarely on Neeson and Nesbitt and they are overqualified for the job. Nesbitt in particularly is able to see saw his character psychologically, increasing the intensity as the hour of he and Alistair's meeting grows closer. A large piece of this are internal monologues, Joe simply looking in the mirror of his dressing room, pulling the knife he has brought to exact his revenge and mulling over if he should simply leave or go through with this.

Neeson is equally good but in a different direction. He plays Alistair with subtly, he's a man who wants his victims to be able to confront him and knows they don't care if he is sorry or not. As he tells one of the BBC crew, he wants them to step in and keep Joe from hurting himself. As we see later in the film, he is completely willing to let Joe unleash his anger on him. But he's not just out to give victims their peace, Alistair also wants forgiveness. He's closed himself up in an estate flat in Belfast, never married and has no children and spends his days either in non-violence support groups or stewing in his home. It is inevitable that these two men are going to meet, but the film lets us wondering under what circumstances will it be and under whose terms.

Newbie Wednesdays - Mystery Team

2010-06-02T09:00:00.002-05:00

Mystery Team (2009, dir. Dan Eckman)
Starring Donald Glover, DC Pierson, Dominic Dierkes, Aubrey Plaza

I read through the Encyclopedia Brown books voraciously as a child. And out of the dozens published and the hundreds of mysteries contained in them, I think I only solved one without having to look at the answers in the back. The titular team of this newly released independent comedy were probably like me. They loved the possibility of solving the crime but when it came down to the actual investigation it was over their heads. Mystery Team is the first feature from YouTube comedy troupe Derrick Comedy. They were one of the first to upload videos to the now uber-popular website and because of their early adopter status they garnered an impressive fan based. So how does the transition from 5 minute web video to 90 minute feature film work out?

Once upon a time, Jason, Duncan, and Charlie were a beloved staple of their small town, solving harmless mysteries like "who ate the pie?" or "who stole Timmy's lunch money?". Now they are seniors in high school, on the precipice of adulthood, yet still behaving like scrappy tweens. They are suddenly hit with a case way out of their league when a young girl asks them to find out who killed her parents. Duncan, the brains of the outfit, immediately wants to turn this over to the police, but Jason, after becoming smitten with the girl's older sister, demands that they take on the case. The result is a very high insanity journey into the suprisingly dark underbelly of their small town. It's a mixture of grossout humor and eccentric characters, including a cameo by UCB alum Matt Walsh.

Donald Glover, who was a writer on 30 Rock before being cast in Community, has always been the standout in Derrick Comedy. He has an enthusiasm and charisma that make him incredibly likable. When I watch Glover acting I see the future of American comedy. He's definitely a young actor with the potential to make it as big as someone like Eddie Murphy or Adam Sandler, with the hope that he remains true to his comedy roots rather then make a series of throwaway pictures (I'm looking at you Grown Ups). A recent Twitter trend popped up calling for Glover to be cast in the lead of the Spider-Man reboot. While I consider myself a traditionalist when it comes to the physical makeup of comic book characters on film, this is a casting move I am behind 100%. That's how enjoyable it is to see Glover act, and he would make a hell of a Peter Parker.

The strength of the film is that it isn't mean spirited towards its leading trio. It would be easy for a group of socially stunted teenagers to be cast in a mocking light, and while humor is found in their awkwardness, we're meant to love them. And its impossible to resist liking these three guys, as they are living out the childhood fantasy of being a detective, finding clues, and being wrapped in a big mystery. The acting all around is spectacular. Bobby Moynihan, currently of SNL, appears as Jordy, a convenience store clerk who was an informant for the boys for years. Moynihan's performance is phenomenal, getting across the pathetic nature of man who gave up on his dreams and is smothered by this small town, but playing it with over the top enthusiasm. It's one of the best and most layered comedy performances I've seen in years. If you looking to see where film comedy is going in the next decade, this is it.

Wild Card Tuesdays - Someone's Knocking at the Door

2010-06-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Someone's Knocking at the Door (2009, dir. Chad Ferrin)
Starring Noah Segan, Ezra Buzzington, Andrea Rueda, Elina Madison

You should probably not watch this movie. By that, I don't mean this is a bad film, but it is definitely not a movie for your casual filmgoer. This exists in a very specialized realm of film, grindhouse, but even still it doesn't strictly adhere to the tenets of that genre and even openly plays with the conventions. This is not to say the film is some masterpiece. It's very cheap and very gritty, and that's what it has to be to do what its trying to do. If you decide to see this movie, and can track it down, you're going to discover a very disturbing, very funny, and in the end oddly moving low budget horror flick.

The first scene of the film features a young man shooting up with some strange drug and then being raped to death by a demonic looking man. Flash to the young man's friends, a group of med school students who react with coldness towards news of his death. The only one who seems to feel anything is Justin (Segan), the most drugged out of all of them who has a dream/hallucination where his dead friend appears in a morgue blaming him for his death. The kids are called into the police station for questioning where its revealed a few nights prior to the murder they had been poking around the basement of a records building on their campus. Justin discovered files on John and William Hopper, a husband and wife serial killing duo who would rape their victims to death. The two were on an experimental drug which Justin finds a vial of and shares with his pals. It appears that the drug has somehow broken down a barrier to Hell, and now the Hoppers have returned in demonic form to wreak havoc.

While the film follows many of the tropes of grindhouse, particularly beginning with a big horrific scene, then slowing down until one more final climactic act of grotesque, it also throws some new ideas. There are a lot of jump cuts, particularly when focusing on Justin, which serve the purpose of showing how his drug addled brain is processing things. Sound is also used in an incredibly effective way, sound being an element that is normally overlooked. In certain scenes, instead of hearing the dialogue, we can see that the characters are talking but the soundtrack is overtaken by ambient static. There's a reason in the plot for this, but just in terms of atmosphere it gives an otherwise mundane scene an air of creepy surreality.

There's a lot of explotative sex, as you would expect in a grindhouse styled film, and this film definitely goes places with it you wouldn't expect. If you thought A Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween was a crudely disguised warning to adolescents to refrain from sex and drugs, this picture will blow those ideas out of the water. The two supernatural killers of the film possess...*ahem* macabre transformations of their genital regions that render them brutal and demonic. William Hopper in particular has a very unique method of killing his victims. I absolutely loved how evil the villains in this film were. I don't believe a studio horror film would ever allow a director to go as far and as horrible as Ferrin takes the Hoppers. At the end though, the film has a strangely sad and poignant. Though once again, I warn you to not watch this film unless your brain is truly ready for the horror.

Shadows in the Cave Digest #05 - May 2010

2010-05-31T23:50:00.000-05:00

Features
Asian Cinema Month
Eat Drink Man Woman - China
In the Mood For Love - Hong Kong
Thirst - South Korea
Yi Yi - China
Ponyo - Japan
Hard Boiled - Hong Kong
My Neighbor Totoro - Japan

Summer Blockbusters
1975-1985 - Sharks and Droids
1986-1995 - Dinosaurs and Robots
1996-2009 - Superheroes and Sequels

Director in Focus - Brian De Palma
Blow Out
Scarface
Body Double
The Untouchables

Hypothetical Film Festivals
Best Horror Remakes Evrrrrrrrrr!
Happy Birthday Ariana 2010!

Reviews
DocuMondays
Tales from the Script
The Weather Underground
Koko: A Talking Gorilla
LoudQUIETLoud

Newbie Wednesday
Harry Brown
Iron Man 2
Daybreakers

Jolly Good Thursdays
Nil By Mouth
Girly
I Capture the Castle

Next Month:
Hypothetical Film Festivals takes a vacation
My 40 Favorite Movie Scenes
Criterion Fridays

The Summer Blockbuster: 1996 - 2009

2010-05-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

What marked the difference between the blockbusters of the 1970s and 1980s and the 1990s and 2000s were digital special effects. For the first two decades the focus was on practical special effects, as the B-rate science fiction films these blockbusters were inspired by used. When you saw a spaceship zipping through the sky there was a physical model of the ship built and there was usually a matte painting of some sort and through the use of green screen the two elements were combined. As unreal as the scene was all its elements were something tangible. The move to computer generated effects is marked as beginning with Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This began a regular tradition of James Cameron being on the cutting edge of film technology.

By 1996, CG effects were old hat. Films from that year included Independence Day and Twister, both of which are remembered more fondly for their special effects than their acting. Independence Day used practical effects for its alien villains and CG for its air battles, while Twister had real actors in real environments but completely CG twisters as well as a CG cow being carried away by it. On the other hand, 1996 saw the first Mission: Impossible film which primarily used practical effects for the majority of its story. These were followed by pictures like Men in Black and The Lost World, one of which began a franchise and the other which continued one. The trend in this period would be to establish franchises using original, and more commonly already established properties from comics and television. The mindset behind anchoring yourself to a franchise was safety. Trying a new formula out meant risk, and risk could mean financial failure. So studio followed the motto of "go with what you know". This was seen in how franchises like Pirates of the Carribean, The Matrix, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and Shrek have become perennial summer movies.

Before the end of the 1990s though, another director established himself as guaranteed box office during the summer: Michael Bay. His movie Armageddon followed many tried and true tropes. There were established actors, up and coming young talent, familiar character actors, a "rah rah" America plot, and lots of explosions. Bay's name would become a common one on big summer movies, in particular the current Transformers franchise, which while commercially successful is reviewed dismally by critics. It doesn't seems to phase Bay though, as he keeps churning at the same type of films and following his established formula to a tee. Another name to rise to prominence as a season favorite was Pixar. Pixar was a computer animation studio that, while part of the Disney family, retained much of its creative independence and is almost the anti-Michael Bay. Bay paints in broad strokes while Pixar is incredibly detail oriented, making sure to populate its worlds with minutiae and causes their films to truly breathe. It was Finding Nemo that put them on the summer blockbuster scene, and this was followed by The Incredibles, Cars, Wall-E, and Up. Up achieved a feat very few summer blockbusters can, it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Hollywood's obsession with clinging to the familiar hasn't always given them typical movies and some times we see old favorites deliver something unexpected. Steven Spielberg played with the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park for awhile but switched gears to release Saving Private Ryan, an R-rated brutal portrayal of D-Day. The film works alongside Schindler's List and the earlier Empire of the Sun as a sort of World War II trilogy. All three were quite unexpected from the man who created the blockbuster with Jaws. In the 2000s, Spielberg switched gears and aesthetics once again to tackle classic science fiction stories. He directed A.I., Minority Report, and War of the Worlds, all of which employed a harsh light and not quite as heartwarming look at life as his previous work. Spielberg was joined by Lucas who returned in 1999 to his Star Wars franchise with The Phantom Menace. Audiences were incredibly split on the film and its follow ups: Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. This time around the Star Wars universe felt very sterile and absent of the life it previously possessed. With the conclusion of this third trilogy, Lucas seems to have once again retreated to the world he was able to build for himself.

The end of 2000s closed out with very familiar faces on the screen. There was a reboot of the Star Trek franchise, a new Harry Potter, a new Transformers, a new Pixar film, and a second film based on the books of Dan Brown. Hollywood is firmly dug in to produce tried and true concepts, with the occasional allowance of a new idea. Just recently reboots of the Spider-Man and Planet of the Apes franchises have been announced and some of 2010s most anticipated summer films have been sequels to successful franchises and rebootings of old ones (A-Team, The Karate Kid).

The Summer Blockbuster: 1986 - 1995

2010-05-29T12:28:00.000-05:00

Coming out of the mid-80s, if you had money invested in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas you were probably incredibly rich. They had success after success, not just in their own films, but in those of directors they were producing and supporting. However, there would be an odd dip that occurred in the remainder of the 1980s. A few film franchises would rise to prominence, Lucas' stock would plummet, and Spielberg would attempt to try out some non-science fiction and fantasy films.

While science fiction flicks made big box office they also cost big budgets to make. It's no surprise that many studio attempted to go with smaller budget films and these typically focused on "rah rah" crowd pleasers are mixtures of action and comedy. The Karate Kid franchise was one of those "rah rah" type films that aimed dead center at kids and young adolescents. You have a young man, bullied at school, who is taught how to fight by a wizened karate master. He's able to overcome the bullies through beating them up. You also had the first three films of the Lethal Weapon series which raised Mel Gibson to prominence and managed to pull in big audiences on a fairly small budget, something studios always like to see. Along with Lethal Weapon, there was Beverly Hills Cop I and II, which vaulted the already popular Eddie Murphy into an even higher level of celebrity. Even today, if you notice every summer seems to have one Eddie Murphy film (this year's is Shrek 4).

There was also use a big name actor to sell the film, rather than a premise. In 1986, Tony Scott's Top Gun was released and took Tom Cruise, who had appeared in quite a few films before then, most notably Tony's brother Ridley's Legend, to stardom. Top Gun works as both a star making vehicle and a "rah rah" America movie. Tom Cruise's Maverick leads his flight unit take on North Koreans flying a fictional style of fighter jet on par with the American F-14s. Despite the implausibility that North Korean would ever be able to compete with the US Airforce, the film was a huge hit and a high selling soundtrack. Tom Hanks was the other actor to make his way up to super stardom during the 1980s. Penny Marshall's Big was his breakthrough, a simple story of a teenage boy who becomes an adult after making a wish. Budget-wise this was an incredibly cheap film to make. No real special effects and no actors who were huge names, at the time. What made the film such a great success was the honest charisma Hanks brings to all his roles. There are few actors that handle a film so naturally. Hanks would be attached to many more summer movies to come, most notably Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, and Apollo 13 and both films that went against the Spielberg/Lucas formula for a blockbuster.

But you can always rely on certain films being a success based on the name attached to them in the director's seat. James Cameron, unlike Spielberg, didn't produce a prolific amount of work but it seemed that he didn't need to to become notable. Cameron made non-summer movies The Terminator and Aliens which set him up for Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Character-driven films weren't Cameron's strong suit and he relied a lot on technology, particularly new types of computer generated effects not yet seen by the public. His T-1000, the liquid metal villain of T2 was a huge shift in special effects driven film making. However, his next film, True Lies would be a non-CG focused film with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis fighting Middle Eastern terrorists.

At the end of the day though, you could always rely on familiar names, be it director or franchise to fuel a successful movie. Spielberg put out the third Indiana Jones film at the end of the 1980s and established a new franchise with Jurassic Park. Jurassic was a type of film that really overtook pop culture in 1993 in a way it would be hard for a single film to do now. It was one of the last pre-internet media fueled movies and was in theaters from June of '93 all the way to October of the same year. Disney also came to the forefront for the first time as a major summer draw. It seems like an obvious company to make summer blockbusters but they had never done so. They got their legs wet with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, both Holiday season releases. Nothing compared to the success of The Lion King. It was a reworking of Hamlet, an odd piece of source material for a summer movie, but it worked. Audiences went again and again and since Disney has had a picture in the running every summer, though now its CG Pixar features.

Next: Batman, Spider-Man, and Star Wars

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - The Untouchables

2010-05-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

The Untouchables (1987, dir. Brian de Palma)
Starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert DeNiro, Andy Garcia, Charles Martin Smith, Patricia Clarkson, Billy Drago

If someone told me Sisters and Carrie were made by the same director, it would sound plausible. If someone told me Carrie and The Untouchables were made by the same director I would definitely question the validity of that statement. At this point in his career, this was de Palma's most "Hollywood" film. Its based on actual events, though highly dramatized for the screen and has the sort of "sweeping" nature you expect from movies vying for an Oscar nod. The story is an interesting one and de Palma is allowed to use some of his cinematographic trademarks along the way.

It's the height of Prohibition in Chicago and one man runs the bootlegging industry, Al Capone (DeNiro). His men use violence and murder to enforce their control, with many innocents caught in the middle. Special Agent Elliot Ness (Costner) is sent in to work against the flow of police corruption and find that piece of evidence needed to bring Capone down. Along the way he recruits an accountant, a police academy rookie, and veteran beat cop Malone (Connery). These men are untouchable, free from the briberies and intimidation tactics of the mob. As they get closer and closer to finding the witness and evidence they need the violence rises and many of them won't make it to see the end.

All the names associated with this film make you think it would be a dynamic and interesting look at the fall of Capone. You have de Palma directing, David Mamet on the script, and a cast of talented actors. However, the film is utterly dull. In particular, the acting of Kevin Costner is like cardboard here. He makes Ness into one of the flattest, uncharismatic crime fighters I've seen in a movie. Not once did I feel energized or inspired by anything he had to say to his men. I half expected a shot of the officers gathered to work under him half asleep as he droned on. On the other hand, I feel like there's very little direction being given to the actors and there is obviously not much good in the screenplay.

Where the film is interesting is when de Palma is allowed to play with how the camera tells the story. There is his typical first person shot, used during a very crucial scene involving Malone. There's also the use of deep focus during an opera scene and some moderately interesting tracking shots. For the most part though, the movie seems devoid of life, which is a shock when it employs such a dynamic director like de Palma. The majority of the work seems to have been put into production design. 1930s Chicago is reproduced with pristine accuracy and costume design was overseen by Armani. The film's score is also handled by the always amazing Ennio Morricone. It just would have been nice to see a film where everyone was allowed to bring their A game.

Asian Cinema Month - Hard Boiled

2010-05-28T23:56:00.000-05:00

Hard Boiled (1992, dir. John Woo)
Starring Chow Yun Fat, Tony Leung

A man leaps through the air in slow motion, wielding twin semi-automatic pistols. Carnage ensues. This is the trademark of Hong Kong action director John Woo, who managed to pretty much invent his own sub-genre of action movies. These are stories where black and white are clearly defined, heroes are wise-cracking bad asses, and the villains are most definitely villainous. This was my first foray into the world of Woo, I skipped his Mission: Impossible sequel and shied away from Face/Off. So, after twenty years of hype, how did I find the master actioneer?

Hard Boiled is the tale of two men. Officer "Tequila" Yuen is a cop dedicated to bringing down the Triad gun running ring plaguing Hong Kong. Tony is a cop deep undercover who is the apple of crimeboss Hoi's eye. Tony is recruited by upstart gangster Johnny Wong to take out Hoi and control crime in the city. Tequila and Tony end up reluctant partners in a crusade to bring Wong to justice. Along the way they form a rivalry over the same woman and end up indebted to each other. Also thrown into the mix is Mad Dog, Johnny Wong's super hitman with a clear sense of honor in his profession.

Hard Boiled has an interesting problem. Barry Wong, the screenwriter died halfway through film, while he was still writing the screenplay. So Woo and his production staff had to cobble together some place for the film to go. Knowing this, it makes up somewhat for the rather random directions the picture goes in its latter half. There's also the fact that the character of Tony started out as an incredibly sociopathic character, going so far as to poison baby's milk. The actor wasn't too comfortable with playing a character like that and convinced Woo to make him more likable. Alongside this is a very uneven love story between Tequila and fellow officer.

What the film does well is the way it tells its story. Woo is amazing when it comes to framing shots and setting up elaborate sequences that turn normally dull shoot outs into ballet performances. Several times Woo chooses to drop the typical camera shots and go into first person or into some unexpected tracking shot that slowly reveals information to us. He's also influenced greatly by some unexpected sources, in particular Francois Truffat. If you've seen The 400 Blows, than you will recognize that same ending zoom in, freeze frame technique used here a handful of times. It surprisingly works and its impressive that Woo was thinking about such "arty" fare when composing a Hong Kong crime movie. Like I said before, Woo was inventing his own genre at this point in his career.

It's nothing spectacular. The weak story definitely hurt the film, but there are a number of interesting set pieces, in particular a mob-owned hospital the last half of the film takes place in. The film make use of practical special effects via explosions in way CG just can't ever mimic. A fun film that hearkens back to an era of uber violent and gaudy over the top crime movies.

The Summer Blockbuster: 1975 - 1985

2010-05-28T11:28:00.000-05:00

It began with a great white shark.

It wasn't until the mid-70s that the concept of summer being a time to release big budget, special effects driven pictures came into the zeitgeist. Looking at the current wave of summer movies, its easy to see that science fiction and fantasy dominate, but back in the 1950s and 1960s the majority of these genre films were low budget and full of poor acting. The novel Jaws by Peter Benchley was purchased by Universal in 1973 and went through two directors before the studio settled on the relatively green Steven Spielberg. Universal's first choice had been John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven) and then Dick Richards, who was fired after continually referring the shark as "the whale".

To Universal, Jaws was going to be a successful film, but they never expected to be as huge a hit as it became. On June 20th, 1975 the picture was released nationwide, meaning it opened in Los Angeles and New York as well as smaller venues across the country. In the past, a film would open in a larger market and slowly spread across the country. Many film historians see this business move as the one that ensured Jaws' success. Up to this point the late 1960s and early 1970s had been dominated by artist driven pictures, and the studios had given up the reigns to young and headstrong young directors with a vision. Directors like Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) and Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude) had been the kind of filmmakers producing studio pictures, something very unlikely even today. In many ways, by using Spielberg, a contemporary of these young directors, but saddling him with a very studio controlled and non-character driven film, the studios were attempting to reassert their control. But the success of Jaws was nothing compared to Star Wars' release two years later.

There's not much to say about Star Wars that isn't well-known already. George Lucas, after establishing himself with American Graffiti and THX-1138, released his science fiction epic using the tropes of the serialized films of his childhood. Unlike Jaws, Lucas didn't have a plethora of studio support behind his film and clashed with his crew, who were veterans of the film industry while Lucas was seen as an upstart. After missing its Christmas 1976 release, 20th Century Fox moved it to May 1977. Early director's cuts were screened for Lucas' friends, including Brian de Palma and Steven Spielberg and their reactions were disappointing. Every thing seemed to be pointing at Star Wars being a colossal failure. Lucas finally screened the picture to 20th Century Fox executives and was shocked. They loved it. One executive admitted to crying during the film at how beautiful it was, and Lucas was completely blown away from getting studio approval on a film for the first time in his career.

However, instead of becoming a studio lackey, Lucas began to build his own quiet corner of the film industry and cleverly established production facilities for sound and other technical aspects of film to create a financial safety net. Filming for The Empire Strikes Back began in 1979, with Lucas letting Lawrence Kasdan direct while Lucas supervised as producer. While the budget for Star Wars has been $11 million ($3 million over budget), Empire had a pool of $18.5 which, after a studio fire, became $22 million. Lucas always seemed to be struggling with the limitations of the contemporary technology to realize his vision. It can be seen in the concept art of Ralph McQuarrie, that Lucas wanted to make something so expansive and ground breaking. It wouldn't be till 1999's The Phantom Menace that he got his wish, while audiences felt the heart of the series was lost amidst masturbatory world building.

For most of the 1970s and 80s, Spielberg and Lucas dominated the summer movie. Spielberg went on to give us Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. He then teamed with Lucas to create the Indiana Jones franchise, a film series that seemed to up the ante in terms of character based blockbusters. Harrison Ford has said in interviews that he is always much more eager to play Indiana Jones again, than Han Solo. With Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Hollywood underwent a change that would shape the industry for decades to come. The level of violence in Temple challenged the MPAA's standards and Spielberg desperately didn't want the film to be slapped with the death sentence of an R rating. These Spielberg/Lucas films depended greatly on the viewer-ship of young audiences, particularly for the merchandising tie-ins. As a compromise, the MPAA invented the rating of PG-13.

One year after Temple, Spielberg released the Robert Zemeckis-directed Back to the Future, a film that combined special effects driven sci fi with the teen comedy. The film proved that you didn't have to have Spielberg or Lucas directing a film to make it a huge success. Both Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale were terrified that the film had not lived up to their vision and figured it would bomb. Audiences went crazy for it however, and critic Roger Ebert pointed out that at its core it shared a lot of thematic similarities with the beloved It's A Wonderful Life. As we entered into the mid-80s, Lucas began to fade from the scene as a director and Spielberg would continue to top the grossing-lists. However, there were now a group of directors moving in to prove their own ability to pull audiences in.

Next: 1986 - 1995: Gump, Disney, and Ahnold.

Jolly Good Thursdays - I Capture the Castle

2010-05-27T19:17:00.000-05:00

I Capture the Castle (2003, dir. Tim Fywell)
Starring Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, Henry Thomas, Marc Blucas, Bill Nighy

This is not the sort of story you would expect from Dodie Smith, the same author behind 101 Dalmatians. Instead of a tale aimed towards the younger set, this is a coming of age story set in the mid-1930s. Themes of wealth and love and how the two are intertwined make up the spine of the picture and, what might have been a trite film, is aided by great performances to become something quite a bit better than that. The picture manages to be both an escapist romance and a grounding story of how much love can hurt.

The film opens with the Mortmains' arrival at an old castle where their author patriarch has relocated them. The events are narrated by middle child Cassandra (Garai), who is overshadowed by their father's second wife Topaz and Cassandra's older sister, Rose (Byrne). The castle, which was a magical place when they first came to live there, has become a dank and moldy tomb for the family. Things begin to change when the owners of the castle, American brothers Simon and Neil Cotton arrive to decide what they are going to do with the estate. Rose sees this as her opportunity to marry into money and tries to woo Simon, the elder brother. However, Cassandra is also smitten with Simon and Neil has feelings for Rose.

The Mortmain family is incredibly eccentric and director Fywell is tasked with finding humor in their quirks as well as showing they have consequences. This is particularly highlighted through Mr. Mortmain, a successful author when his family was young, but who has failed to be able to write anything of value since. At first his hang ups and odd behavior come across light, but as the film progresses we see the detrimental effect that have on his entire family. Cassandra is also forced to face the fact that her father's mental state may be beyond help. That's quite a heavy weight for our plucky 16 year old protagonist to handle. In a similar fashion, Rose's vapidity and desperation to find a man are played for laughs at the start, but when she enters into a relationship with a man she doesn't actually love we can see how a harmless quirk becomes destructive to many people.

The film is not a major cinematic achievement by any means, but it is a very solid and well paced story about eccentric people having to deal with how their behavior effects others. The story is a very mature one, that lets the characters lose themselves in the giddiness of a first love, but also grounds them by not having everything tied up in a neat package. There is hurt and not much closure for our protagonists. In many ways this is a more adult Nicolas Sparks tale, that refrains from maudlin sentiment and allows its characters to have real flaws.

Newbie Wednesday - Daybreakers

2010-05-26T19:11:00.000-05:00

Daybreakers (2009, dir. The Spierig Brothers)
Starring Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe

Vampires are on the brain of many a Hollywood screenwriter these days. From the Twilight franchise to CW teen drama The Vampire Diaries, the sanguine are a hot commodity. The vampire is one of those monsters that seems to have a couple different interpretations. You have the elegant sex object popularized by Dracula and the Anne Rice novels, you have the eerily inhuman humanoid seen in the classic Nosferatu, and then occasional we see a completely bestial form. What's interesting about Daybreakers is that it touches on each of these forms; and while the film is high concept, does it live up to the ideas it presents?

In a world where humans were overtaken by vampirism about a decade earlier, humans are becoming extinct and without a steady blood supply, the vampires are experiencing a secondary mutation. The blood deprived vampires end up feeding on each other, poisoning their systems and becoming more animal than human. Edward Dalton (Hawke) is a corporate hematologist seeking to synthesize a blood substitute and tests are less than successful. He's overseen by his intimidating boss (Neill) and army grunt brother. Eventually, Dalton crosses paths with the human resistance movement and their leader, Elvis (Dafoe). Elvis was once a vampire but through a random circumstance he reverted back to human. Dalton sets out to figure out why and see if he can cure humanity once and for all.

The film is chock full of amazing ideas. Life is lived at night or in a series of interconnected tunnels beneath the city where there are copious little cafes or newspaper stands. Life is fairly similar to our own, except for the whole needing to feed on blood part. It was also refreshing that there would be select vampires who retained empathy that outweighed their biological needs to feed. There's even a senator featured on a news program whose big issue is humanity rights and wants to remove humans from being used a cattle. The cinematography is also very clean and sharp. The directors definitely know how to set up a stylistic shot and their previous special effects works comes through.

On the flip side, the actual story of the film is complete and total mess. The transformation of Dafoe's character never gets a comprehensible explanation and seems to be boiled down to wrapping yourself in a wet blanket and being exposed to sunlight, literally. This is the elusive cure for vampirism. The twists and turns the plots takes are either incredibly forced with no real reason behind them or simply an excuse to show people being torn limb from limb. Its apparent early on that the actors in this film are better than the material they are working with, and they most definitely don't raise it beyond its mediocrity.

Asian Cinema Month - My Neighbor Totoro

2010-05-25T10:10:00.001-05:00

My Neighbor Totoro (1988, dir. Hayao Miyazaki)

Hayao Miyazaki, Japan's answer to Walt Disney, is mainly concerned with the rural and natural settings of Japan, rather than bustling metropolises. He can go very dark with this message (Princess Mononoke) or light (Ponyo), but he always returns to the ideas of children in an environment populated with copious vegetation and mystic animals. Once again, the children of the story need the help of a being from the forest to overcome the troubles of their lives and its all told in the type of lush animation you expect from Miyazaki.

Satsuki and Mei have just moved to a country house with their father to be close to the hospital their mother is staying in. The first day in the new home they are enthusiastic to explore, and encounter soot spirits, ashy ghosts that skitter away into holes in the wall when light enters. Little Mei explores further while her older sister is at school and follows a couple of magical rabbit-like creatures into the forest where she meets a gigantic sleeping furry beast. The creature identifies himself with a series of yawns which Mei hears as "Totoro", the name she assigns him. The two girls eventually deal with a crisis moment involving their mother's health and Totoro comes to the rescue to help diffuse the pain they feel with some lighthearted fun.

What I liked about the film was its rejection of the American fantasy formula. The drama here is kept very minimal and in the background. An adult audience is going to understand the mother's condition as being a dark point in the picture, but it is presented in such a way that it won't upset younger viewers. Miyazaki is able to tell stories for children, and adults not yet swallowed up by cynicism, in a way better than Disney ever has. The Disney films never feel like a real world, merely a construct and complete fantasy. Miyazaki infuses his worlds with details that make it feel like a place that could really be out there. They are the type of simple fantasies a child would truly dream up.

There is no need for princesses in Totoro. These are real little girls, captivated with simple things and vulnerable when it comes to the idea they might lose a parent. The creatures are never frightening and the children rush into the unknown without a sense of fear. It's incredibly refreshing to see this kind of animated film, a style we see little of in the States.

DocuMondays - loudQUIETloud

2010-05-23T22:27:00.000-05:00

loudQUIETloud (2006, dir. Steven Cantor, Matthew Galkin)
Featuring The Pixies (Charles Thompson, Kim Deal, David Lovering, Joey Santiago)

Kelly Deal, sister of Pixies' bassist Kim Deal, sums up the nature of the band in very simple terms. She tells her sister, "You are four of the worst communicators I have ever seen!" And she is most definitely correct in this summation of the group. Throughout their 2004 Pixies Sell Out tour, the bandmates communicate with each other the barest minimum, retreating into their individual solo projects when not on stage in front of fans. What the documentary confirms is that there is no new Pixies material coming any time soon, and that the band simply got back together because, like most of us, they have bills to pay.

The Pixies were formed in the late 80s and fell apart in the early 90s, particularly from in-fighting between Charles Thompson and Kim Deal. As the film opens, Deal has recently come off a rehab stint for alcoholism and is accompanied by Kelly on the tour. They travel in a separate buses from the guys in the band because Kim must stay away from alcohol. Drummer David Lovering is also dealing with issues of substance abuse, though he hasn't come to that realization. The rest of the band is visibly uncomfortable in his presence and eventually confront him about his constant cocktail of booze and Valium. The film is a meditation on what happens when a group of people who produce great art end up absolutely hating each other.

The most telling aspect of the picture is Kim Deal and her sister in this separate bus, following the guys. Even on the guys' bus, Charles is caught up in negotiation a switch to a new recording label, Joey is working on the soundtrack for his documentary film, and David is unnatural chipper from the drugs in his system. These were the twentysomethings of the 1990s, now in their late thirties and completely self absorbed. Kim plucks away on demos for the new Breeders album, writing songs for it, never once thinking about new songs for the Pixies. At one point a reporter from Rolling Stone interviews Charles and asks about new material. Charles says he's been keeping his solo demos around and letting the band hear them to hint about getting some new stuff together, but from seeing the rest of the film he seems disinterested, and often times annoyed to work with these people.

It's interesting to see the enthusiasm of the high school and college aged fans who became aware of the Pixies years after the band fell apart. In their eyes the Pixies are a single unit and unreal. One girl brings a sign reading "Kim Deal is God". She manages to slip Kim a copy of Brave New Girl, a novel whose protagonist is an obsessive fan of the Pixies. The camera is on Kim later in her bus as she thumbs through the book. Her reaction is one of distress, she quickly puts the book down and lights a cigarette. These people are simply that, people. Nothing more. They are in the middle of divorces, struggling with addictions, and trying to get by.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Body Double

2010-05-23T14:59:00.000-05:00

Body Double (1984)
Starring Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton

This film wouldn't exist if it weren't for Vertigo and Rear Window. Once again, de Palma returns to his filmmaking mentor, Alfred Hitchcock to inform his own work. However, coming off of the stylistically redefining Scarface, Body Double feels like a Cinemax softcore porn with a creative cinematographer's flourish lain over the top. For all the moviemaking love put into this film there's just something off about it the whole time that taints it from living up to de Palma's previous Hitchcock homages.

Jake is an actor working on a B-horror film, Vampire's Kiss. He experiences a moment of claustrophobia during a scene in a coffin and the director tells him to take the week off. Jake arrives home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man and ends up homeless. Things are not going so well. He meets a fellow actor, Sam who needs a replacement for a house sitting gig in the Hollywood Hills. Jake happily takes the job and Sam lets him know about the woman across the street who nightly stands naked right in front of the large windows. Jake begins watching her obsessively and begins to realize she is in danger as a menacing figure stalks her. There are lots of twists and turns, but if you are an observant film goer you will probably figure out the picture's twist early on.

What hurts the film about as equally as the lackluster script are the uncharismatic actors. Craig Wasson is so incredibly bland his performance comes across as comically bad. His interactions with Gregg Henry, who plays Sam, feel incredibly odd and unnatural, and this never comes across as intentional. Beyond Jake, there isn't much acting going on in the film. All of the other characters, particularly female characters are flat props used simply to create peril and have violence rained down upon them.

The picture definitely feels like a film only the 1980s could have produced. It is full of excess and gratuitous sex that is put in the film merely to satisfy de Palma's proclivities as well as to make Hollywood execs happy. Jake is eventually pulled into the harsh world of pornography to track down a woman that has a connection to the mystery he has become involved in. This gives de Palma the opportunity to shows lots of naked ladies (something he enjoys doing a little too much). At the end this will feel like de Palma's cheapest film, a sidetrack back to Hitchcock country and a strange work to bridge the gap between Scarface and his later entrance into Hollywood big budget movies.

Asian Cinema Month - Yi Yi

2010-05-21T19:59:00.000-05:00

Yi Yi (2000, dir. Edward Yang)
Starring Nien-Jen Wu, Elaine Jin, Issei Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Hsi-Sheng Chen

The one thing all families have in common is that they are complex beyond belief and filled with emotional nuance. This millennial picture focused around a typical middle class family in Taipei is able to explore the fragmented lives of the individuals without resorting to clichéd dysfunction. The drama is kept moderate yet the film is never too slow to disengage the audience. If you are of the mind to enjoy explosive Michael Bay-esque movies than this may not be the best bet for you at the moment. If instead you want to patiently follow the rise and fall of a quiet family then you are in for something very fascinating.

The film opens on the wedding of NJ's brother-in-law. NJ is the patriarch of the central family in the film and he is a very patient and loving father. His son, Yang wants McDonald's rather than the food being served at the reception and NJ submits to the child. On their way back to the party, NJ runs into his college sweetheart at the same hotel for a business meeting. Something appears to be rekindled between the two. NJ's mother-in-law ends up in a coma shortly after the wedding and his wife becomes emotionally broken. The burden of tending the household falls on their teenage daughter, Ting. Ting has become friends with the new neighbor's daughter and is caught in a high school love triangle with the girl's boyfriend. Yang is constantly picked on by an older girl at his school and become very reclusive and obsessed with taking photos of mundane things.

The hits the three hour mark and is as epic as it is subtle and contemplative. There's no sweeping score or dramatic crescendos. It's simply life being played out and framed as if the mundane is just as epic as mythical heroes' journies. The structure of the film is that of an entire human existence. We open on a wedding, end on a funeral, and in between there is love, heartbreak, tragedy, murder, people sharing good times over a warm meal, people feeling alienated, attempted suicide. But the picture never feels over the top or campy. The tone is kept tempered so this feels like dipping your hand in vat of pure distilled humanity.

I was made to think of Hollywood attempts at family dramas and how I can never fully engage with those characters because the script is forced to follow a 90 minute template. Yes, three hours is a long time for a film of this nature, but it is absolutely essential. And even three hours isn't long enough to know these characters. No one is overly dramatic despite the situations they are put in. NJ is tempted with getting back together with his lost love and the outcome is left ambiguous. NJ does business with a Japanese video game developer during the film, Ota, who is one of the most intriguing characters in the film. He feels very real, a businessman who didn't get to where he was because he was ruthless, but because he recognized the need of every person to be inspired by something.

This has to be one of the most positive, yet real films about people I have ever seen. It will leave you asking a lot of questions about our families, about the distance we have from them, and how large the scope of our lives truly is.

DocuMondays - Koko: A Talking Gorilla

2010-05-17T14:26:00.000-05:00

Koko: A Talking Gorilla (1978, dir. Barbet Schroeder)

I have faint memories of being a little kid and seeing video of Koko the gorilla and her cat/adopted child All Ball. I also remember seeing Dr. Penny Patterson with Koko and years later came across an article that reminded me I was familiar with this story already. Now, as an adult, I go back to where the story began, the days before Koko was an internationally known figure and simply part of study at Stanford to teach a gorilla sign language. What she became is a mirror to put our own ideas of personhood and intelligence up against.

Koko was born in captivity in the San Francisco Zoo. She was lent to Stanford, but as the movie explains, she was kept past the agreed upon stay and things between the zoo and the college got very tense. Dr. Patterson, 28 at the time of the documentary, bonded with Koko deeply, and shows an obvious maternal instinct with the ape. Director Schroeder explains in the film that the entire documentary had to be kept quiet, lest the zoo contact authorities to have Koko removed.

Koko is shown going about her daily routine with Patterson, who we are told has to be there when Koko wakes up and when she falls asleep to keep their bond airtight. Patterson has in effect devoted her entire life to the care and development of Koko, same as a devoted parent to a child. Patterson even disciplines Koko with a fearlessness that shows an absence of distinction between man and ape. For us laymen, should a gorilla misbehave we would try to back out of the room slowly. For Patterson, she actually strikes Koko to reprimand her for tearing up her room.

The evidence in support of Koko being considered a "person" with the rights that come inherent to that is her ability to apparently synthesize language. She knows 1,000 American Sign Language signs and 2,000 words of spoken English. For objects she has no words for, Koko has shown the ability to merge two signs to describe the object. She had no word for "ring" so she called it "finger-bracelet". She had no word for "duck" so it became "water-bird". Fairly impressive. While there can be valid arguments back and forth about Koko being a person or not, I found Patterson's wish that Koko not be seen as something that could be owned a statement I would be in support of. The zoo sees Koko as their property, Patterson sees Koko has her child. Both may be a little presumptuous in their ideas of Koko. Once an animal gains the ability to use a human developed language to communicate it should cause us to step back and question many things. If Koko expressed a desire to leave both Stanford and the zoo, would she be granted this request?

A very thought-provoking documentary from one of the premiere documentary makers. Barbet Schroeder, much like the Maysles or Barbara Kopple, is not a character in his own film, but an observer. We hear the occasional question, but the subjects are truly the focus of his work.

Hypothetical Film Festival - Ariana Birthday Edition!

2010-05-15T15:08:00.000-05:00

So today is my beautiful girlfriend, Ariana's birthday. She is in Puerto Rico and myself in Nashville so it can be a little sad some times to have to wait and deal with overpriced airline tickets and saving up enough to live in the same place. That said, she has gotten a few creative birthday gifts from me recently (a solo D&D campaign designed for her, my class from student teaching wishing her happy birthday over the phone). Here is her third gift: a blog post devoted to her :D

Persepolis (2007, dir. Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud)

This was the first film Ariana and I saw in the theater. She came up to visit in February of 2008. She had read the graphic novel the film was based on recently and by sheer lucky it was playing for a couple week at the Green Hills 16. It was a cloudy afternoon and, after stopping by Lipscomb, we walked over to the theater and saw it. Afterwards, it was dinner at Cheeseburger Charlie's and grabbing some groceries before heading home. In a lot of ways it was the first official "date" if you think of dates as consisting of things like a "dinner and a movie". The film is great, I think particularly because Satrapi was directly involved.

Airplane! (1980, dir. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)

This was on the same visit as Persepolis above. Airplane! was being shown as a Midnight Movie at the Belcourt and sort of structured a night around it. First, we visited the Frist Museum, they had an exhibit on the Impressionists at the time, and Ariana being an graphic designer major enjoyed it. We played around in the kid art exhibit afterwards, making prints and goofing off. Then it was dinner at Jackson's where I had some amazing grilled tuna, thinking about it makes me hungry. Then Airplane! where the employees of the Belcourt introduced the film the same way flight attendants prepare a plane for takeoff. It was lots of fun.

The Happening (2008, dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

Without a doubt one of the funniest experiences I have ever had in a movie theater. During my first visit to Puerto Rico we decided to go see this picture. We both a little lukewarm about M. Night but I figured it might be good. Boy, were we wrong. Throughout the film we kept turning to each other with looks of "Is this for real?", I kept reassuring her "I'm sure there's going to be some twist to explain why everyone is acting completely unnatural". The film became a madcap comedy to us at the point where Mark Whalberg sings "Black Water" in an attempt to prove to some people he and his companions are not affected by the virus. You can see the clip here. I knew I loved Ariana when she noticed two shots with boom mikes in the frame that I completely missed. The Happening has become a comedic touchstone in our relationship.

The Dark Knight (2008, dir. Christopher Nolan)

As soon as I saw the first trailer of this one I thought, "I want to see that movie with Ariana." This is something we tell each other frequently when an upcoming films looks like something that appeals to our geeky sensibilities. I'm not exactly sure why, but there is just something great about sharing that first viewing of an amazing film with the person you love. I remember us both leaving the theater in a sort of dazed high, the geek centers of our brains overloading with stimulation. I saw the film many times since, but no viewing has matched as great as it was seeing it with her.

Waltz With Bashir (2008, dir. Ari Folman)

I first saw this film by myself, then during a visit by Ari I want her to come see it with me. Being a graphic designer she liked the visuals. I was a little ticked that she fell asleep during the middle (she was getting a cold if I remember right) but I made sure to keep her awake. Afterwards we got some amazing Indian food at a restaurant that got turned into a taco place now. It sucks because the saffron rice at that place made me happy to be alive.

Asian Cinema Month - Thirst

2010-05-14T14:15:00.001-05:00

Thirst (2009, dir. Chan-wook Park)
Starring Kang-ho Song, Ok-bin Kim, Hae-sook Kim, Ha-Kyun Shin

What if Double Indemnity was a vampire flick? That's part of the premise going on in this visually startling South Korean horror flick. I've only seen one other Chan-wook Park film (Oldboy) and now after Thirst, I know I need to see more. No other country in the South Asian region produces films that excite me as strongly as South Korea. Unlike their neighbors, South Korea seems to find a perfect balance between the craftsmanship or artsier fare and the dynamic storytelling of Hollywood films. So how does this vampire noir stack up?

Father Sang-hyun is living in a world infected by the Emmanuel virus, a plague that behaves like a sort of super leprosy, affecting only men. Sang has grown tired of seeing the patients of his Catholic hospice dying and volunteers to be a guinea pig for vaccine tests. He ends up being the only one of 500 test subjects to survive, after receiving a life saving blood transfusion. Sang returns to his parish only to be greeted by a throngs of devotees believing him to be some sort of savior. Sang has doubts but nevertheless comes to the hospital bed of a cancer patient. As fate might have it, the patient is Sang's childhood friend Kang-woo, who is married to Tae-ju, a girl they both fancied years ago. Along with this, Sang has developed an unnatural thirst as a result of the transfusion, he now craves blood. First, he gets it from a coma patient in his hospice but the hunger grows stronger and after ending up in a illicit relationship with Tae-ju it is obvious things will not end well.

The first thing you'll notice about this feature is the strength of the visuals. No matter what anyone thinks of the quality of story and character development, you have to give up for some crazy and inventive camera play. In many ways Park is disciple of the Tarantino-aesthetic. The camera will maneuver in ways that are not physically possible, yet Park is able to hide the CG trickery in a way that never takes you out of the film. Thirst is also not short on gore, but more in the sound department than visual. When Sang suckles on an IV or an open wound, the noise of his slurping swallows up the screen. There is a lot of blood and some moderate subtle gore, but it will be the sounds that linger with you.

The two main characters, Sang and Tae-ju are perfect counterbalances to each other, a sort of Korean Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Sang is contemplative and worried about his condition while Tae-ju is desperate and manic about exploiting his vampirism for her own gain. The film balances its horror with some comedy and the mix of the two is very disturbing. A great piece of counter-programming to Twilight and would be an awesome double feature with Let the Right One In.

Jolly Good Thursdays - Girly

2010-05-13T18:22:00.000-05:00

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly (1969, dir. Freddie Francis)

If you never heard of this film, I can't fault you. It is an obscure little British horror-comedy that has strong genetic ties to The Addams Family, but more macabre. Full of murder, mayhem, and some very unnerving incestous overtones, Girly (for short) is one of the funniest black comedies I have seen in awhile. In the US we tend to put the crazy killers of our films at the bottom rung of the socio-economic class and basically kick the poor while they're down. The wonderful thing about the UK is the intense dislike of the aristocracy, even by a lot of the aristocracy themselves. Thus, a film as wonderfully insane as Girly can come about and skewer the 1950s nuclear family unit.

Somewhere on a palatial English countryside estate lives Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly. Though Sonny and Girly are obviously in their twenties, they still dress and behave like schoolchildren. Sonny and Girly also have a rather queasy relationship that is hinted at but never made explicit. Also in the mansion live the Friends, homeless men and free love hippies lured to the house and locked up for the sadistic pleasure of the quartet. The introductory friend finds he is unwelcome when he can't follow the rules Mumsy has set up to run her happy home. As a result he's decapitated. But into their lives comes New Friend, a gigolo who through a series of gruesome circumstances ends up trapped. Unlike previous Friends, New Friend is a conniver and begins his quest to tear about this happy homicidal home.

Girly was the project of acclaimed cinematographer Freddie Francis, the lens behind such films as Tales of Hoffman, the Gregory Peck Moby Dick, and The Innocents. Francis transitioned into directing in the early 1960s and went on to helm some cult British horror films and established him as filmmaker who brought a lot of visual flair to his pictures. Francis would eventually return to working the camera and was responsible for the cinematography on such films as The Elephant Man, Dune, Glory, and Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear. Girly was originally a stage play (you can feel the more theatrical moments in the film). The premise of the film is a lampooning of the "traditional" family unit at the hands of the 1960s counter culture.

The film is very fun, dark fare. It's never truly horrifying, just the kind of violence that gives off a creepy vibe and elicits laughs more than gasps. The middle of the picture meanders a little bit, becoming a bit of a struggle to work through, but the way New Friend begins to tear apart the four members of the family by turning them on each other is enjoyable to watch. Definitely an odd, incredibly obscure picture worth a watch.

Newbie Wednesday - Iron Man 2

2010-05-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Iron Man 2 (2010, dir. Jon Favreau)
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwenyth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, Don Cheadle, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, John Slattery, Jon Favreau, Paul Bettany, Garry Shandling

In 2008, two major comic book based films were released: The Dark Knight and Iron Man. By the end of the summer I had seen The Dark Knight three times, Iron Man only once. Now, I admit a predisposition towards the DC Comics characters, but I have enjoyed many of the Marvel movies (X-Men 1 & 2, Spider-Man 1 & 2). The first Iron Man was an enjoyable film, I just never found it as amazing as it seems much of the movie-going populace did. Robert Downey Jr. is a great, witty actor but the character is where my problems lie, because Iron Man/Tony Stark just isn't that interesting.

It's been two years since Tony Stark went public with his superhero identity of Iron Man. The news made its way to Russia, where Ivan Vanko, son of a Soviet physicist betrayed by Stark's father sees his pop's designs being used in the Iron Man armor. Vanko spends awhile building his own cobbled together suit to attack Stark but is arrested. The second villain in the picture is Justin Hammer, a military industrial complex billionaire who is frustrated with being unable to copy Stark's technology. These two forces will inevitably come together to create a force that will challenge Stark's resources. And these are two of the myriad of half-hatched plots and sub-plots that turn the film into a complicated mess.

Iron Man 2 is definitely suffering from sequel-itis. The pressure to up the ante in comic book franchises is hard to fight and so many new elements are introduced to try to keep the series feeling fresh. The part that is missing though are motivations. Stark is given a very weak motivation do something in the film and it definitely comes across as a plot element thrown in about a dozen drafts into the screenplay. Hammer's motivation is only a few shades different from Obadiah Stane's in the first film and Vanko's reasons for revenge are just as hackneyed. Every thing felt like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle you had pieced together so many times that it just wasn't fun anymore.

What the picture did have was a lot of "sound and fury signifying nothing". There were "hot babes" and "sweet rides" but for an hour and a half that's pretty boring. There were a lot of attempts to hint at the Thor movie coming next summer (all the mentions of New Mexico from the SHIELD people) and of course more hinting at the inevitable Avengers film. But all the actual material dealing with Tony Stark fell flat. Vanko didn't ever come across as a formidable enemy and Hammer was the sort of character you knew was doomed to fail from the moment he showed up on screen. Scarlett Johansson was stage prop, but her stunt double did an amazing job. Looking at it all together, its not much better than some of the mediocre Marvel movies (Daredevil, Fantastic Four), sadly not even the power of RDJ could save it.

Asian Cinema Month - Ponyo

2010-05-11T21:32:00.000-05:00

Ponyo (2009, dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
Starring (English dub) Noah Cyrus, Frankie Jonas, Tina Fey, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, Betty White, Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin, Carlos Alazraqui

It was freshman year of college and it was a Friday night. We decided to see a movie. We let Clint pick, usually a bad choice...however, he decided on a Japanese animated feature called Princess Mononoke. I make no bones about the fact that I pretty much detest anime. I've tried to watch multiple series and can barely make it past the first episodes. Anime films, however, I have been able to tolerate fairly well. Well, that evening as we settled in to the barely occupied theater, I was overcome with amazement at the lush imagery before me. This blew anything Disney made right out of the water. The themes were complex and aimed more at adults than children. After that I would go to see Nausicca of the Valley, Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle. All of these are the work of master animator Hayao Miyazaki.

Deep beneath the ocean lives Fujimoto (Neeson), an wizard who has abandoned the surface world and raises his fish daughters to fear humanity. The eldest of these guppy-like creatures escapes and is found by Sosuke, the young son of a navy officer and a nursing home attendant. Sosuke names the fish girl Ponyo and has to avoid her being taken away by a number of human forces. Eventually, Fujimoto surfaces and wants his daughter back while Ponyo has come to enjoy the surface and wants to become human. Some of these elements sound familiar? Yes, this is a Japanese re-imagining of The Little Mermaid.

The plot of the film is incredibly simple and I was reminded of the lighter Kiki's Delivery Service. There's never any real peril or chance anyone might actually die. You would think with the stakes being so low the picture would be a bore, but it most definitely isn't. What pulls you in is the seemingly infinite imagination of Hayao Miyazaki and epic skill of his animators. Every film Miyazaki releases reveals why CG animation will never trump the power of high quality cel animation. It might not be as quick, but when given the proper time and skill you have unparalleled works of art. The wordless opening sequence of the picture is breathtaking, featuring the nighttime migration of jellyfish then transitioning to a panorama of sea life.

The adventures of Ponyo and Sosuke are pure wish fulfillment. I was particularly enamored with their excursion of a tiny steamboat through a flooded village. It felt like that exact thing so many kids would imagine while playing on the couch or in the backyard, the idea of freedom to travel and explore. Ponyo is a delightful character, she is constantly discovering the surface world and find joy in such simple things. Her first sip of hot cocoa drives her wild, her first warm meal puts her into a sleepy coma, and there's never an adult admonishing for such exuberance. While you may think this is a film made for children, its just as much for adults, tapping into that time of discovery and play I think many of us miss.

DocuMondays - The Weather Underground

2010-05-10T21:14:00.001-05:00

The Weather Underground (2002, dir. Sam Green and Bill Siegel)

What is the line you would refuse to cross when it came to your beliefs about justice? Is it taking to the streets in protest? Is it standing up to the thug tactics of a corrupt cop? Is it killing in the name of your beliefs? No matter left or right on the political spectrum we can see multiple instances where once peaceful and calm movements were derailed by individuals desiring to commit acts of violence. There was Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, The Unabomber, and various other extremists who either cling to an ideology or religion as their justification. This film is about one such group that used methods of terrorism against the US government in the late 1960s through the mid 1970s.

Through archival footage and interviews with the players in this story we are told of the rise and fall of a homegrown terrorist organization. It's common knowledge that the 1960s were a period of cultural upheaval across the globe. In the United States, it was was student protests against the war in Vietnam that fueled the fire, and the government seemed bent on use brutal force to push them back. In 1969 the non-violent Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a convention in Chicago. The war in Vietnam was escalating and the current leadership of the SDS was trying to hold things together, while brasher elements in the group wanted to become violently pro-active. Out of this convention was born The Weathermen, a sub-group who clandestinely planned violent riots in the street and bombings of government buildings. At one point they were even hired to, and successfully did, break Timothy Leary out of a California prison. Their efforts had little effect on the government's efforts in Vietnam, the ending of which was more influenced by the media's release of graphic violence wrought on Vietnamese civilians. At the 1970s wound down, the members of the The Weathermen went into hiding, eventually turning themselves in at the onset of the 1980s.

The documentary was surprisingly balanced in how it presented this group. I personally would agree with many of the stances the Weathermen took on domestic and foreign policy up to the point where they brought violence into the mix. And while this is a left wing group, the mistakes made and regret felt year later transcend politics. At the time, this young men and women, including the much spoken about Bill Ayers, felt completely right and certain of their actions. One of the most fascinating interviews is with Brian Flanagan, a man who left the group shortly before Vietnam ended. He is able to sum up how things went from hopeful to cultish very quickly. He emphasizes that the leadership got so caught up in breaking the system completely, they failed to realize that lasting change comes in increments.

Mark Rudd, one of the leaders in the group, presents excerpts from his memoirs which detail a young man unsure of what he was getting into and heartbroken at the chaos he wrought, but not wavering in his political stance. I think this is a key point. While all the Weathermen regret the bombings and the riots, known as "The Days of Rage", they have never stopped believing that many of the military conflicts the US has are not done with the best intentions. In our current political climate, we have a right wing movement with some members hinting at violence by brandishing weapons. The testimony of these men and women who have been there should be examined closely to understand the cost of violent actions and how they linger in the souls of those who commit them.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Scarface

2010-05-08T15:13:00.001-05:00

Scarface (1983)
Starring Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfieffer, Robert Loggia, F. Murray Abraham, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Certain films permeate the pop culture consciousness so deeply that you never have to see them to know them. I was 13 and watching an episode of The Simpsons where Homer ends up in possession of a large pile of sugar. He becomes power hungry as the episode progresses and at one point says. "First you get the sugar. Then you get the money. Then you get...the women." At the time I found the line hilarious and filed it away as simply something those clever Simpsons writers came up with. Years later I would learn it was reference to Brian De Palma's trend setting foray into big budget Hollywood movies.

Its 1980 and Fidel Castro has opened up Cuba temporarily to send away those unwilling to conform to his particular brand of Communism as well as a large number of convicts. One of these convicts is Antonio Montana, a small time thug. Very quickly Tony and his pal, Manny come into the employ of Miami druglord Frank Lopez. Tony proves himself a tenacious and ambitious figure and it comes as no surprise that any gangster that crosses his path is in danger of his life. Tony weds his rival's woman, sets his sister up with beauty salon of her own, and establishes strong ties to a Columbian cocaine grower. However, this film is based on the style of a Greek tragedy, meaning for every rung Tony climbs on the ladder of power he has that hard of a fall waiting for him when it all goes bad.

It's incredibly interesting watching Scarface in the context of twenty-seven years after its release. Stylistically it bleeds the 1980s. It's separated by De Palma's last film, Blow Out, by only three years but the distance between the films feels like a decade. While Blow Out owed much to the paranoiac anti-establishment pictures of the mid to late 1970s, Scarface is a trailblazing film, inventing its own style as it goes. This is an even bigger accomplishment after De Palma was basically tagged as "the new Hitchcock" and produced films that were highly derivative of classic cinema. The choices De Palma makes firmly entrench this picture in a very specific time and place, and there is no way it could ever be called "timeless". Choices of music and cinematography here basically invent the 80s aesthetic. Everything is neon and harsh and brutal, and underneath it all driven by greed.

The screenplay was penned by a 36 year old Oliver Stone (pre-directorial debut) and reflects a lot of themes he would further explore in his own films. Greed is the driving force here, just as in Wall Street. While Stone hits his criticism of American capitalism right on the nose in that picture, the commentary is much more disguised in Scarface. Tony's story is the immigrant story; he comes to our shores and works his way up the ladder to become a rich and powerful man. Yet, that classic immigrant story is soaked with corruption and acts of vile depravity. While this picture is very much surreal in how it deals with its characters, its themes lie in utter truth. It's interesting to note that Tony's story, while very apropos looking back at the Miami drug trade going on in the 1980s, was also reflective of the Hollywood system and Wall Street, where cocaine was a daily part of life.

It's not a surprise that this picture was incredibly divisive. The main character is a man who is a danger not because he is a physical threat, but because he is frustratingly stubborn. The power of his personality was bound to turn off audiences expecting their title figure in a mainstream film to be a protagonist to root for. Not once did I find myself wanting Tony to succeed. Instead, I found a character to root for in Manny and Tony's sister, Gina. For De Palma, this film changed everything. The days of Hitchcock-ian pastiche were coming to a close, and now he was a golden boy amongst the Hollywood studios. However, he has one last major nod to his beloved influence in the form of Body Double.

Director in Focus will be back in two week with Body Double. Next week, get ready for a birthday surprise!

Asian Cinema Month - In the Mood For Love

2010-05-07T21:19:00.000-05:00

In the Mood For Love (2000, dir. Wong Kar Wai)
Starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung

In writing poetry or prose you have a toolbox called language. This toolbox contains things like grammar, syntax, meter, rhyme, etc. Film has a toolbox as well, but is much much larger. And the idea of having more to work with sounds like it would be easier than writing, however more does not equal easier. In the film toolbox you have elements like sound and images. And subsets of sound would be dialogue, character's accents, soundtrack, sound effects, sound mixing. Under images we find art direction, costume design, lighting, and the most vital of all cinematography. For even the most seasoned artist, misusing these tools is an easy thing to slip up and do. With this feature from director Wong Kar Wai every single tool is used perfectly and produces a flawless example of how rich style can blend with very clear, stated substance.

The film opens in Hong Kong in 1962. Chow (Leung) is renting a room in an apartment building on the same day as So (Cheung). They pass in the hall, barely acknowledging each other. Cut to a few days later and they happen to both be moving in on the same day. Chow's wife is seen only from behind, her face intentionally not revealed. So's husband travels abroad to Japan almost every other week and is glimpsed in a similar fashion. The months roll on and both Chow and So become convinced that their spouses have begun an affair. Not knowing how to deal with this they attempt to recreate the circumstances that led their spouses astray with themselves to understand what happened.

The plot is very loose and is carried mostly by the atmosphere created by Wong Kar Wai and his cinematographers, Christopher Doyle and Pin Bing Lee. You rarely see cinema filmed so beautifully and with such delicate craft. I found this to be the kind of film where I don't remember scenes of dialogue or action, rather I remember images like paintings. Chow sits over his typewriter working on a story and the smoke from his cigarette billows up above his head. The rich detail of every gray tendril of smoke is captured on screen and I felt excitement at such a profoundly beautiful image. The film's simple theme (a longing tune played on violin) is used repeatedly in scenes where Chow and So are navigating past each other, both physically and emotionally. The camera peeks around door frames, into crowded rooms of neighbors gathered to play cards. We see Chow and So separated by these people who are caught up in raucous laughing, and the tension bleeds off the screen.

The film is able to convey the conservative social pressures of the time. Chow and So meet in his bedroom, merely to share food and must be cautious of Chow's landlord. They are unable to touch, made clear in a scene where So reaches for Chow's hand after being caught up in a rare moment of happiness and then quickly withdraws. The film is greatly concerned with absence: the absence of the spouses, the absence of companionship or love, the absence of the spouse's full identities. A title card that introduces the film reads "the past was something he could see but not touch", a phrase that sums up what this lush film is all about.

Jolly Good Thursdays - Nil By Mouth

2010-05-06T17:14:00.001-05:00

Nil By Mouth (1997, dir. Gary Oldman)
Starring Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Charlie Creed-Miles, Laila Morse

I didn't plan it this way, but Nil By Mouth is the perfect co-feature for yesterday's Harry Brown. Both films take place in the government funded estate housing and focus on some of the harsh and brutal realities of life there. While Brown goes for a more Death Wish, hyper-violent tone, Nil By Mouth is a documentary-like look at the people Harry so eagerly murders. The film's violence is not constant but comes in explosive and jolting moments. Every thing orbits around a single act of violence that takes place in the middle of the picture.

Ray (Winstone) is an ox, a violent brute of a man who is having his second child with Valerie (Burke). He maintains a disinterested relationship with her, going out at night with his mates, ingesting all sorts of drugs, drinking copious amounts of booze, and soliciting women at seedy strip clubs. When Valerie stays out to play pool with friends, Ray explodes. Also living in this war zone is Billy (Creed-Miles), Valerie's brother and Janet (Morse), Valerie's mother. Billy is a heroin addict who is constantly borrowing money from his mom and sleeping on a roulette wheel of couches. Janet is a helpless figure, standing back and watching her children's lives decay and, in Billy's case, driving him to drug dealers' houses so he can score.

The most obvious element that carries the film is Ray Winstone. I've seen Winstone in films like Sexy Beast and The Proposition and in both of those he plays more of the simmering, muted type. Here he is like a British Jake Lamotta, exploding but never in a showy way, more of a man who has never seen men react anyway other than with violence. There's a moment in the film when he has a conversation with his best mate Mark and talks about how unloving his father was. This monologue lays it out on the table that these men exist in a cycle of brutality. Why should we expect them to know how to show affection or control their rage when they have never seen a man do so, and when they live in a world where you prove yourself through the violence you inflict on others.

Not to be overshadowed is Kathy Burke as Valerie. Burke knows how to tap into the working class up bringing of her character. Valerie knows that her safety is dependent on Ray's presence. She overlooks his nightly outings and has a pretty strong suspicion he cheats on her with other women. Their relationship has come to the point where she simply doesn't care. She is pregnant with their second child and states that she wanted to have another child, but didn't want to find a different father. There's no love for Ray, he's just there. And Ray is with her so he has an anchor point to return to at the end of the night.

The film is soaked in profanity, but that is an accurate depiction of this world and the natural grammar of the place. I was reminded of Mike Leigh's films about the English working class and how often they are cited as "brutally true to life". They really have nothing on the grim reality of Oldman's directorial debut. It's not an easy film to watch. The accents are thick and require the American viewer to play close attention, and the subject matter is not pretty. However, we have to see the full view of these people so that we don't slip into the Harry Brown mentality.

Newbie Wednesday - Harry Brown

2010-05-05T15:55:00.000-05:00

Harry Brown (2009, dir. Daniel Barber)
Starring Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles, David Bradley, Ben Drew, Jack O'Connell

In the States we call government housing The Projects, in the UK they have the Estates. This is setting of this bleak and tragic story of a man who is alone. The film doesn't flinch from showing shocking acts of brutality and doesn't raise up one figure as a champion over another. Harry does what he does, but why? The motives for the killing spree remain vague when you begin to examine things closely. Is it in retribution for his friend? Or is their something much darker going on?

Harry Brown, is ex-marine and pensioner living in the Estates. His wife is living in the hospital stuck in a catatonic state. He has one friend in the world, Leonard, whom he meets at the corner pub for a pint everyday. Leonard is fed up with the way drugs are sold openly and people like himself are harassed by the hoodlums that roam the estates. One morning, Harry wakes up to learn Leonard was found stabbed to death in a pedestrian tunnel. This seems to be the final straw for Harry and he embarks on a crusade to avenge his friend, killing young men where ever he goes.

The film eventually goes down a fairly predictable road with Harry's action parallel by a police investigation about them. What is more interesting is all the subtext brought to the film, possibly not intentionally. There is a lot of work put into making the world Harry inhabits grimey and flithy and despicable. So we are naturally appalled by the various denizens he encounters. As an audience we are clearly set up to cheer for Harry and boo all those nasty villains (see Gran Torino). However, there is a moment near the end of the film where Harry asks a character to kill him. This immediately caused me to re-evaluate what had gone before. Here's a man whose wife is gone and has just lost his best friend. He lashes out, presumably because he wants but he then wants to simply die at the end. His entire crusade was a nihilistic one. Harry lost all he loves and now he wants to explode, hitting what ever he can in his path.

If it wasn't for Michael Caine this would have been a forgettable film. There is something about just his subtle looks that elevates the film. In one scene he sits across from a drug dealer whose girlfriend is overdosing on heroin. The slight glances and looks he makes around the room feed the audience tons of information. While Clint Eastwood seemed one note through Gran Torino, Caine delivers a multi-layered performance. Emily Mortimer is also wonderful as the detective in charge of Caine's case. By the end, she's the only virtuous character in the film. She has been devoted to her job and wants to solve the murders. However, we can see the world crumble around her.

Harry Brown definitely wants to be a lofty film, but its very much a continuation of the Death Wish premise. I admit there is some greater emotional depth here. The disappointment for me came from how undeveloped characters are. There is no motive for anyone save Harry and it left me feeling like the picture was very hollow.

Asian Cinema Month - Eat Drink Man Woman

2010-05-04T19:41:00.000-05:00

All this month, in honor of Asian Heritage Month, I will be looking at some major films from the contemporary Asian cinema canon. While the term "Asia" can refer to areas as diverse as the Middle East, India/Pakistan, and the South Pacific, I will be focusing mainly on films out of China, South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. In the future I definitely plan on having a month devoted to Middle Eastern cinema....maybe not so much India, just not a fan of their pictures, too many crazy musicals.

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994, dir. Ang Lee)
Starring Sihung Lung, Kuei-Yei Yang, Chien-lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang

Mealtime is a proven way of bonding with others. Whether its over a campfire, at a booth in a diner, or around the family dinner table, the act of breaking bread with others unites people in a very beautiful way. Even many animals hunt and dine together in packs, with somewhat of an understanding of the bonding that occurs when they do. Ang Lee presents the story of how food and the act of eating cobbles together a group of disparate people into a family.

The film is set in Taipei, Taiwan and focuses on Chu, the partiarch of a family made up of three daughters. Chu's wife died years earlier and now his three daughters live at home with him, each feeling the burden of watching after their obstinate and independent father. Every Sunday, Chu prepares a lavish feast of traditional Chinese cuisine, much more than enough for this small group. Chu has also unofficially adopted his middle daughter's old schoolmate and her daughter. As the story progresses, his three daughters begin to find men with whom they contemplate leaving home for. In many ways, this story is a variation of Fiddler on the Roof, very much about family and tradition.

I really liked this film, much more than I anticipated. I've been sort of back and forth with Ang Lee (didn't care for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but love Brokeback Mountain) so I wasn't sure how I would feel about this picture. I think Lee is best when he is dealing with small, character driven stories. The family surrounding Chu are very complex and real. There are no easy solutions and no acts of serendipity. The high drama you would expect from a Hollywood version of this tale is non-existent, yet there are emotional stakes. Chu has lost his sense of taste and so the act of preparing this meal has a deeper meaning to it. The eldest daughter is also a wonderful chef, but no thanks to Chu. He makes sure the kitchen is off limits to his children, so she learned from Chu's best friend and fellow chef when she was a child.

The way Lee films the cooking sequences is an example of a director at their peak. Everything about the methodical ways Chu prepares his dishes and the care he puts into them is absolutely apparent. The flavor of the dishes comes through the screen somehow and you can feel the steam coming off the dumplings and rich flavor of the stews and steamed fish. If you were putting together a list of films about food, this one definitely make it high on the list.

There honestly wasn't much about this film I didn't enjoy. It's a little over two hours, yet I was so engaged by it I never felt like checking the timecode to see how much was left. I was completely absorbed in the world and especially the characters Lee was presenting. While he has gone on to make bigger budget films, my hope is that Lee can always remain close to his early roots, making films that found their wonder in people, rather than effects.

DocuMondays - Tales From the Script

2010-05-03T18:34:00.000-05:00

Tales From the Script (2009, dir. Peter Hanson)
Featuring Allison Anders, John August, Shane Black, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Frank Darabont, Antwone Fisher, Mick Garris, William Goldman, David Hayter, Zak Penn, Adam Rifkin, Jose Rivera, Paul Schrader, Guinevere Turner

The documentary opens with Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact) talking about leaving the studio commissary with a group of executives and one of them telling him his script was the best thing he ever read. Months later, Rubin was in the same commissary, leaving behind the same executives with new writer and heard them say his script was the best they ever read. This anecdote sets the tone of the rest of the documentary which isn't so much about screen writing as it is about the relationship between writers and the studios. This relationship is one in which the writer wants to accepted and the studio wants to get that script out of his grubby little hands and make it the movie they want to see.

The film is made up of interviews with a wide swathe of writers from mid-century pictures up to those of the last decade. To frame the segments of the documentary, scenes from popular films that revolve around screenwriters are used (Barton Fink, The Muse). The result is a very inside baseball type film that is definitely never going to appeal to a large audience. To people working in the film industry and movie nerds like myself, the picture is fascinating glimpse into the trials and travails of the Hollywood screenwriter. We get to hear from veterans such as William Goldman (Butch Cassidy, The Princess Bride) and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Affliction) as well as young, but equally prolific writers like David Hayter (X-Men, Watchmen) and John August (Big Fish, The Corpse Bride).

I found it very interesting to hear the voices and see the faces of screenwriters of films I was familiar with. I have to say, most of the films represented here were ones I don't care for, particularly Bruce Almighty and Click, but the writers definitely fit your expectations of them. One of the most fascinating interviewees was Guinevere Turner. She started out scripting the indie lesbian romantic comedy Go Fish and went on to pen a draft of American Psycho. Turner tells the story of working with Uwe Boll on Bloodrayne and learning that he was letting the actors make edits to her script. While this would drive most writers insane, Turner says she told herself to take deep breaths and that she hated the movie anyway.

The film fails to be a helpful guide to novice writers which is a shame. Goldman has become a sort of god of screenwriting and has numerous books on the topic. There's some interesting comments on the "postcontent" era of films which might be useful, but overall its just an interesting curio that shows us where films are born.

Hypothetical Film Festival - Best Horror Remakes Evrrrrrrrrrrr!

2010-05-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

With the remake of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street there is yet another horror film being "re-imagined" in theaters. But remaking horror flicks has been a mainstream trend since the 1960s and Hammer Studios buying up the Universal monsters. Here's a film festival devoted to movies I think are the best among horror remakes.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, dir. Werner Herzog)
Starring Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz

Acclaimed German filmmaker Herzog decided to remake F.W. Murnau's vampire film, believing it to be the best film ever produced by a German director. The original silent Nosferatu was made as a result of the inability to get the right to the Dracula novel. Murnau makes a few tweaks, such a dehumanizing the title vampire lord even more. When Herzog's version came long Dracula was now in the public domain so he was able to absorb more elements of it into the story. Certain scenes are exact recreations of the original silent picture but Herzog also develops the title vampire's personality further, causing him to become a sad, pathetic figure more than a completely menacing inhuman monster. Also, there are few actors who were as prepared to play a ghoul as Klaus Kinski.

The Thing (1981, dir. John Carpenter)
Starring Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur

The original The Thing From Another World (1951) was directed by genre jumping master filmmaker Howard Hawks and reflected a post-Hiroshima fear of science. Carpenter's remake was much more faithful to the source novel and included the element of the alien's ability to mimic the cellular structure and appearance of living matter. Kurt Russell plays a member of an Antarctic science crew who encounter a husky running loose and its Norwegian science expedition owners trying to kill it. They learn quickly that the dog is a microbacterial alien species bent on wiping out all life on earth to appease its evolutionary directive. The film has some of gnarliest special effects ever put to film and creates a pitch perfect tone of paranoia.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986, dir. Frank Oz)
Starring Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Levi Stubbs

Director/producer Roger Corman is known by the loving term of "shlockmeister", meaning he makes cheap, exploitative genre pictures that have total cult followings. His 1960 flick The Little Shop of Horrors was turned in to a stage musical in the 1980s and that was how we got this wonderful horror-musical-comedy. Moranis is Seymour, a plant store employee who discovers a strange plant that feeds on blood and flesh. He's able to satiate with pin prick from his finger until the creature grows larger and he must resort to murder. The picture balances the right level of black comedy with a satirical commentary on early 1960's America. Ellen Green is definitely the musical highlight of the film, reprising her role on the stage as Audrey. The special effects for the evil man-eating plant Audrey II are also wonderful, particularly its final "adult" form.

Evil Dead II (1987, dir. Sam Raimi)
Starring Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi

In 1981, Sam Raimi released cult favorite The Evil Dead and it opened doors for him to work on some slightly higher budget crime pictures. As the 80s came to close he accrued enough funding to remake this first great film. I know I was confused when I started watching this and realized it functioned as both a remake and a sequel to the first picture. The events of the original movie are retold in the first 20 mins while a new parallel story involving archaeologists is introduced. But all you really need to know about this one is that it has Bruce Campbell in it. And he gets a chainsaw hand. I mean the entire Spider-Man trilogy has nothing on that. This picture ends on a cliffhanger that leads into 1993's Army of Darkness.

The Ring (2002, dir. Gore Verbinski)
Starring Naomi Watts, Daveigh Chase, Brian Cox, Amber Tamblyn

This remake is much better than its 1998 Japanese original. Here the city and atmosphere of Seattle are used to perfection without ever naming the city or making a spectacle of its skyline. Instead, the soaked, rainy, bleak tone of the region underscores the looming horror. A videotape is passed around and comes with the warning that anyone who watches it will die seven days later. It ends up in the hands of a Ruth, a woman working in the media. She watches the tape and is now in a race against time to figure out the origins of this phenomenon and possibly how to stop it. The picture is full of incredibly disturbing imagery and is able to use CG effects without feeling like we're staring at a green screen. It also has one of the best twist endings and earns every second of it. They rarely make horror this enjoyable these days.