[Note: When this feature premiered here some weeks back, it was under the title "Not on DVD". As several readers were thoughtful enough to point out, this was not technically accurate, because there isn't anything that you can't find in some version on DVD provided you have access to an all-region player, live at one of the far corners of the earth, and know a guy what knows a guy. Since then, researchers in the Screengrab test labs have labored to come up with a title for this feature that will be both honestly descriptive and pithy. As you can see, they failed. But you get the idea, right?]

Today marks the 72nd birthday of Mr. Jack Nicholson. In 1958, Nicholson made his movie debut in the title role of the 70-minute Roger Corman production Cry Baby Killer, which would lead to more than a decade's worth of solid employment in low-paying jobs in low-budget indie films, many of them for Corman, most of them exploitation and drive-in fare, though a few of them (such as Irving Lerner's 1960 Studs Lonigan and the pair of "existential" Westerns, The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, that Monte Hellman directed back to back on Corman's nickel in the mid-'60s. (Nicholson also wrote the script for Whirlwind and had writing credits on a few other '60s films, including Hellman's 1964 Flight to Fury, The Trip, and the Monkees vehicle Head, with whose director, Bob Rafelson, he later made Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Blood and Wine.) The movie that made Nicholson a star, Easy Rider, was basically an art-house version of the biker movies that Corman had made, starting with The Wild Angels, which starred Easy Rider's Peter Fonda. Nicholson had come on board Easy Rider as an afterthought, when Rip Torn, who was set to play the good-hearted good ol' boy George Hanson, got into a bitch-slapping contest with Dennis Hopper and got his invitation to join the production rescinded. In fact, at the time, Nicholson thought that his acting career was over. He was tired of bashing his head against walls trying to break into the industry and had arranged to make his directing debut with an adaptation of Jeremy Larner's 1964 campus novel, Drive, He Said. It was only when he saw Easy Rider with an audience and picked up on the crowd's reaction to his performance that Nicholson realized that his career as a movie star had just begun.

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As soon as I learned that Scott "Mr. Unwatchables" Von Doviak had gone out of his way to avoid seeing the writer-director Jody Hill's new comedy Observe and Report, I knew that I would move hell and high water of necessary to get an early gawk at it. I can't chalk this up entirely to morbid curiosity. I enjoyed Hill's first film, The Foot Fist Way, a raggedly low-budget indie comedy starring Danny McBride as a malfunctioning martial arts instructor, and I loved Eastbound & Down, a six-episode HBO series that Hill co-created with Ben Best and McBride, who played a broken-down wreck of a burnt out professional baseball player. Observe and Report stars Seth Rogen as Ronnie Barnhardt, a shopping mall rent-a-cop who could be Paul Blart's evil twin. An overgrown pudgy ball of unfocused adolescent rage, Ronnie sees his chance for redemption in the quest to apprehend a flasher who's been bothering people in the parking lot; the movie, which tends to wear its conceptual ideas on its sleeve, makes it clear that the flasher is Ronnie's doppelganger, but instead of harassing people with his unclothed swinging dick, Ronnie has mace and a baton and is trying to find a way against the mall's prohibition against loaded firearms. This is Hill's entry into big-budget, major studio feature filmmaking, and he's clearly set on maintaining his signature edge: a satirical approach towards blustery, lower-class macho bullies and the corrupted cultural images of masculine heroism from which they take their cues, that flirts dangerously with condescension. Bringing that sort of thing off in the context of a big commercial comedy that has to make it past the preview audience test groups would be some trick, especially since Hill's direction tends to be pretty rudimentary beyond his way with actors and his ability to set up a joke. Observe and Report also suggests that it might be some trick pulling it off without Danny McBride in the lead.

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LUKE SKYWALKER & PRINCESS LEIA, STAR WARS IV-VI (1977-1983)



Getting his first look at Princess Leia in what was once the first and is now supposed to be the fourth Star Wars movie, Luke fairly moos, "She's beautiful!", thus revealing that he's an old-fashioned boy who likes his headphones big, round, and gnarly. Later, Leia will plant a quick smooch on him while he's in the process of saving their asses. This was back in those more innocent days when George Lucas, whatever he's said to the contrary since then, didn't know that he was going to be making a second movie, let alone that he had a whole complicated mythos to spin around it. By the time of The Empire Strikes Back, when Leia plants a hot one on Luke to make Han Solo jealous, it was clear that Leia had decided that her heart was with the bad boy who liked to hang out with Bigfoot, but just as clearly, Luke still thought he might be in the running. Certainly he didn't have the traditional manly response to his sister slipping him the tongue. You revisionist historians can dance around this all you like, but the fact is that for a couple of movies there, the all-ages audience for the Star Wars saga was treated to the sight of the Annakin sibs kind of hitting on each other. No wonder George Lucas opted to abandon his plans for a trilogy of films that would follow the action of Return of the Jedi, where the big reveal was made: he didn't have the heart to stage the most awkward holiday dinner scenes in movie history.

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There’s probably an interesting photographic study to be made of filling stations in movies, provided someone is willing to put forth the necessary time and effort to do it. I only float this idea because of last week’s quote from Bob Rafaelson’s Five Easy Pieces, in which the final shot found Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea bumming a ride to Alaska off an unseen trucker at an instantly recognizable Gulf station. The conversation takes place at a distance, with neither party instantly visible to the camera, but that didn’t stop many of you from correctly identifying the quote. Congrats to all who did.

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While we’ve been busy with our spreadsheets and slide rules, trying to figure who the big winners will be come Sunday night, Time’s Richard Corliss is just getting around to giving his picks for the 1998 Oscars. No, Corliss hasn’t slipped through some sort of wormhole in the space-time continuum. Instead he’s presenting Time’s First Annual Re-Oscars.

The premise is that the Academy may have occasionally made a mistake or two over the years, a controversial notion we’re nonetheless prepared to embrace. “What we're offering is a second chance at the Academy Awards handed out on March 23, 1998,” Corliss writes. “To a lot of people, the record 11 Oscars that James Cameron's Titanic lapped up that night were suitable acknowledgment of a much-loved movie that quickly became the top box-office attraction in film history. We're asking how Titanic, which was named the Best Picture of 1997, and the performances that won in the four actor categories have stood the test of time. And we're answering: Eh, not so well.”

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