The Screengrab : 2001: a space odyssey

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THE GRADUATE (1967)

As I noted in our list of the Top Ten Best Movies Of All Time, The Graduate is pretty close to perfect, right down to its classic finale. All by itself, the climactic rush to the altar made our list of great “race-against-time” scenes, and the sequence where Dustin Hoffman’s character pounds the church window and wields a crucifix against the older generation to rescue his lady love from bland suburban mediocrity still feels cathartic today. But the final moments truly seal the deal in one of the greatest ambiguous fade-outs of all time as Katharine Ross’ Elaine stares at the man she’s chosen, suddenly wondering what exactly comes after “happily ever after,” while Hoffman’s Ben stares straight ahead, the lost expression of the opening scenes returning to his face as he clearly wonders, “Now what?” Considering Charles Webb, the author of the source material, spent the next several decades in cash-strapped obscurity, tending a clinically-depressed lady with painted-on eyebrows named Fred while trying to get a Graduate sequel off the ground, maybe Ben and Elaine had reason to worry. (AO)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The ending to Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece continues, forty years after its release, to baffle and intrigue, its post-light-show sights – a white room; Keir Dullea’s astronaut seeing himself, as an elderly man at a table and dying in bed; the monolith’s sudden reappearance – forming a tantalizing riddle. In its final, mesmerizing image of the star-child, 2001 does what no subsequent Kubrick film did, presenting a hopeful vision of the future, one in which man is finally free (at least until the forthcoming dystopia of A Clockwork Orange) of his base animalism. (NS)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Let me first make it clear that I’m very much aware that the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange was originally published with a final chapter that never saw the light of day in the United States until Rolling Stone featured it in a 1987 issue. That’s when I first read it, and at that point I’d already seen the movie approximately 783 times. (Stanley Kubrick claimed he’d never seen the missing chapter before making his film, but he had – he just didn’t like it.) Burgess’ ending finds the cured Alex out for another night on the town with his new droogies. But he’s not really up for it – he’s getting too old for this shit, and entertaining thoughts of domestic bliss. I never felt like I needed to know this about him. “I was cured all right” strikes the right note for me – it doesn’t preclude the possibility of Burgess’ outcome, after all, but if we’re going to give this guy his free will back…well, we better be prepared for anything. It’s hard to imagine that final chapter fitting in cinematically with the world we’ve been immersed in for over two hours, and as Kubrick later demonstrated when working with Stephen King, he was never one to let the author’s intentions get in the way of his own worldview. (SVD)

STROSZEK (1977)

Werner Herzog has never been interested in sticking to convention, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the strange and wonderful Stroszek. Beginning with a fairly formulaic setup -- a trio of misfits journey to America in search of a new life -- Herzog then proceeds to spin out his story in the most unexpected of ways. After hard times hit, the film courts cliché as the title character (played by Bruno S.) and his elderly pal Clemens Scheitz decide to hold up their bank, but when the bank is closed they rob the neighboring barber shop instead to the tune of a whopping $35 and use it to go shopping before Scheitz gets arrested. From there, it gets even odder. It’s the images that Herzog finds to conclude his tale that make this a classic, as we witness the sight of the stolen tow truck, now set ablaze, driving in circles around the parking lot with nobody at the wheel. So bizarre is the spectacle that it’s easy to miss Bruno climbing onto the ski lift with his shotgun, followed by the sound of the shotgun firing. Then, of course, there’s that dancing chicken, one of the most famous images in Herzog’s entire oeuvre. According to Herzog, the entire crew hated the damn chicken, but it so fascinated him that he felt the need to journey 600 miles from his principal filming location in order to shoot the final scene in the rest stop where the chicken danced. What does it all mean? Herzog, to his credit, leaves it to us to decide. (PC)

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

No Country For Old Men denies audiences the grand gesture and the blood. Strange to say about a film that features a killer who is less a man than a force of nature, but it's true. When Llewelyn first comes upon the scene of the drug shootout, the violence is over. When the bullets finally find Llewelyn, it happens offscreen. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stumbles into a potential conflict with Chigurh, the killer has melted away. Carla Jean even dies offscreen. It's a bloody movie, sure, but it studiously avoids giving audiences the easy conclusions that they may want. This is especially true at the end of the movie. Sheriff Bell has retired, giving his wife the peace of mind she wants, and he describes a couple of dreams he had to her. Both feature Bell's father, who he told us in the introduction was sheriff before him. In the first, he's lost money that his father gave him. In the second, his father silently passes him, carrying a fire, and Bell knows he will make a fire to protect and warm him. That's one of the beautiful things about this movie: even as it denies audiences their basest impulses, it gives them something unexpected. Here, the language is one of author Cormac McCarthy's major concerns, the existential quest for a moral code in a fallen world. The Coen brothers like to subvert expectations, and it's fair to say that this jolt of philosophy wasn't at all what audiences were expecting. But it was a far greater gift. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Nick Nolte in WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN? (1978)

You could argue that this isn't technically a death scene, since Nolte's character doesn't die on-camera; in his last scene as Hicks, the Marine turned heroin courier, he's walking along the train tracks in the desert heat, determined to hold up his end of the agreement to meet his partners somewhere down the line, despite the fact that he's bullet-riddled and bleeding to death. He staggers along, alternately wincing in pain and performing old basic-training drill session games like a man fighting off sleep, and the next time we see him, he's dead. But seldom has an actor thrown himself with greater conviction and physical force into the act of dying. Nolte was in the best shape of his life -- Veronica Geng wrote that his body "was burned down to pure will" -- and especially well-equipped to seem alive enough to fully communicate the cost of a man's death. When he finally goes down, it's as if a whole species had been wiped out for good. (PN)

Bruno S in STROSZEK (1977)

Werner Herzog himself doesn't even know what the dancing chicken is a metaphor for. Perhaps Ian Curtis thought he knew. Even as Bruno S tries to lift himself out of life, he finds himself only circling up and down, while his truck winds around until it explodes, and they can't stop the dancing chicken. (HC)

Sean Connery in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975)

John Huston's long-delayed version of the Kipling story -- he'd originally planned to use Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable in the roles played here, magnificently, by Michael Caine and Sean Connery -- has a childlike desire to believe in adventure-book heroism that is shaded by an old man's wry awareness that violence and conquest are never purely heroic, and that while futile gestures can seem stirring and beautiful, they're also, well, futile. Connery goes out in glory here, as he would a dozen years later in The Untouchables, and a word should be said for his and Caine's sidekick, Saeed Jaffrey, whose last scene would bring Gunga Din out of the grave, saluting. (PN)

James Caan in THE GODFATHER (1972) & John Cazale in THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

Once upon a time, Michael Corleone had two brothers. A small army took one away from him. The other one he had to take care of himself. Here again we have the dichotomy between quiet death scenes and big, loud ones, and it's no surprise that Sonny, who for all his faults is the white-hot life force in The Godfather, an uncontainable live wire surrounded by people older or meeker or more icily calculating, goes out big. Perhaps more haunting is the death of John Cazale's Fredo, who goes out like an already flickering candle hit by the breeze, or like an afterthought. Sitting in a little boat and about to feel his brains emerging from the front of his head, he bows his head to pray -- and while it could be that he senses what's coming, it would be totally in character if he just wanted to catch a fish. (PN)

Slim Pickens in PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973)

Sam Peckinpah's elegy for the West is also an elegy for a disappearing generation of character actors. When James Coburn requests that old sheriff Slim Pickens accompany him to a shoot-out with outlaw L. Q. Jones, Pickens replies that he's gotten to a place where he doesn't do much of anything "unless there's a piece of gold attached." He then loads his gun and returns the money that Coburn's just thrown to him, thus establishing himself as one of those Peckinpah characters who mainly talks so that he can have the thrill of contradicting himself. (Jones, who goes out with shaving cream on his face, shot down while executing a comic heartbreaker of a wobbly-legged attempt at a heroic last charge, is another: "Us old boys oughtn't to be doin' this to each other," he complains to Coburn, while the two of them enthusiastically go about doing it to each other.) Fatally ventilated, Pickens, followed by his no-nonsense wife and deputy (Katy Jurado), staggers to the side of the river to die. His head slowly moves from side to side, so that it isn't clear what he's looking at, but from the expression on his face, you'd pay a lot to see whatever he's seeing. (PN)

HAL 9000 in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1967)

Kubrick has a reputation as a cold bastard, but it's a terrible, moving moment when the only character in 2001 who seems to have a past, some intellect, and an emotional life bites the dust, out there in the iciness of space where there's no one he can turn to for help. You will be remembered, HAL 9000. (PN)

Vera Clouzot in LES DIABOLIQUES (1955)

I should start by mentioning that the above clip will spoil the greatest shock of this shocking movie. All of the tension in the prior 97 minutes comes to a sudden, heartstopping moment. I've seen this movie many times, and have yet to breathe during it. Be wary. (HC)

Alec Guinness in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949)

This one offers quality in bulk, because Guinness plays eight characters -- the members of the D'ascoyne family, each of whom has to be eradicated by the social-climbing antihero (Dennis Price) so that he will have no obstacles standing between himself and the dukedom he means to inherit. It's hard to single out a favorite, but we'll confess to a special affection for the one that Price doesn't have to take out himself: Admiral Lord Horatio D'ascoyne, who dies as "a result of a naval disaster which arose from a combination of natural obstinacy and a certain confusion of mind." (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven, Eight & Nine

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 9-15, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Greetings, groovy ‘Grabbers! I’m Jericho Moonpie, Editor Emeritus of the Screengrab. You know, back when I ran things around here, this place wasn’t all about trailer reviews, precursors and unwatchables. Back in my day, the Screengrab was a revolutionary movement! We didn’t have time to sit around and figure out our Top Ten Best Movies Ever, Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten. (Good call on 2001, though. That’s some trippy shit!) We were out there on the front lines, dropping acid in the popcorn down at the drive-in and splicing anti-war slogans into prints of The Green Berets.

But even though today’s Screengrab lacks that ‘60s spirit, I’m still proud of my association with it and I’ll miss it when it’s gone. And so will you! So you better load up on these new posts while you can:

Reviews: The Brothers Bloom, Summer Hours, Jerichow

Unwatchable #36: “Daddy Day Camp”

More "Slumdog" Schadenfreude

Screengrab’s Five to Watch at Cannes

Precursors: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Star Trek Roundup: Potential Villains, Khan Alternatives and the Shatner Scene That Wasn’t

Reviews By Request: Angel Heart (1987, Alan Parker)

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST FILMS EVER!!!! (Part Nine)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Paul Clark's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1. BELLE DE JOUR (1967)
2. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
3. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)

The greatness of The Passion of Joan of Arc stems from the fact that director Carl Th. Dreyer knew what it was that made Joan’s story important- not that she believed that God had tasked her to save France, but that she was so steadfast in her faith that she thought it better do die than to deny it. Consequently, Dreyer’s version of Joan’s story has no battle sequences and no heavenly visions, merely a powerful retelling of Joan’s final days, her trial and execution. The world of this film is an unsparing- one might say godless- one, full of evil and underhanded men who are more than willing to sacrifice Joan for their own political gain. This serves to throw into sharp relief the power of Joan’s faith, by heightening the pain and suffering she endured up to the end for the God in whom she so resolutely believed. Falconetti’s performance, then as now, is a wonder, and it’s only fitting that she never appeared onscreen again- how could she have possibly lived up to it?

4. JEANNE DIELMAN (1975)

The sheer amount of focus that director Chantal Akerman and star Delphine Seyrig bring to this film is pretty breathtaking, showing us the everyday life of one woman over the course of 3 ½ hours. What’s more, Jeanne Dielman isn’t an especially noteworthy woman- she’s a single mother who turns the occasional trick to help pay the bills. But rather than lingering on Jeanne’s side job- which has no bearing on her life outside the confines of her bedroom- Akerman instead shows us the details of her everyday routine- preparing the meals, cleaning the flat, doing the shopping, and so on. Because of Akerman’s extensive use of real time, the film becomes about this routine, and consequently, when anything interrupts the routine, the film gains a surprising amount of impact, even from something as simple as Jeanne not getting her usual seat at the local café. As of now, Jeanne Dielman is unavailable in the United States in any home viewing format, so if the film ever makes it to your local rep house, you owe it to yourself to go.

5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

6. ORPHEUS (1949)

“A legend is entitled to be beyond time and place,” states director Jean Cocteau in his introduction to Orpheus. This unique approach to the original myth allows Cocteau to re-imagine it as one of the kinkiest love-quadrangles the big screen has ever seen, involving the titular poet, his wife Eurydice, Death herself, and her chauffeur Heurtebise. The movie’s key performance is from Maria Casares, who is not the larger-than-life Death that most audiences would expect, but so life-sized and lonely in the role that the love entanglements are allowed to be as poignant as they are. One of the most memorable touches Cocteau brought to the film was his knack for making the real world surreal, not merely through editing and camera trickery (film run backwards for eerie effect, characters suddenly disappearing into thin air), but also through strange locations (a bombed-out building used as the realm of the dead) and surreal plot points (chiefly among them the car radio on which Orpheus listens to the bizarre "poetry"). Cocteau was a true multi-talented artist, and Orpheus is on top of everything else one of the great films about the uneasy mix between art and life, in which life and art intrude onto each other, but in the end, if the art is truly enduring then not even death- or Death- can take it from the world.

7. CITIZEN KANE (1941)

8. PLAYTIME (1967)

I don’t think that any viewer who is paying attention can possibly deny what a singular directorial achievement Playtime is. With this film, a box-office disaster on its initial release, Tati re-created modern-day Paris on his own terms as a sterile maze of boxy skyscrapers, plate-glass windows, and beeping gadgetry. But while other filmmakers might be tempted to turn this setting (built entirely from scratch for the film) into an urban nightmare, Tati- true to the film’s title- concentrates on the funny little eccentricities that sneak their way in. This approach is ideal, as it turns out, as Tati’s impossibly intricate mise-en-scène (his skill at engineering visual moments is even keener than Keaton’s) would run the risk of becoming stifling if it wasn’t done with such offhand charm. To describe any of the priceless moments in the film wouldn’t spoil them so much as it would sell them short, as Tati pulls them off so perfectly, yet so unassumingly. And in the midst of it all is Tati’s signature character Hulot, a bastion of old-fashioned provincialism, who would exist at odds with his hyper-modern surroundings but for his singular brand of good-natured aloofness, which translates surprisingly well to his new environment. Playtime is bravura filmmaking of the gentlest kind, a film that demands to be revisited- and seen on the biggest screen possible- innumerable times to be appreciated, and is a sheer delight on each and every viewing.

9. THE GENERAL (1926)

If I was forced to choose a favorite filmmaker, my first choice would almost certainly be Buster Keaton. But for me, an even tougher choice is which of his films to choose. For the purpose of this list, I decided to disqualify Keaton’s short films, which sadly eliminated such classics as One Week, Neighbors, and The Scarecrow. In the end, while part of me was tempted to choose Sherlock Jr. or Seven Chances, I kept coming back to The General, which is both the greatest Civil War movie ever made and one of the greatest comedies in cinema. Rather than filling the film with wacky, distracting supporting characters, much of The General is comprised of scenes with Keaton alone on the train, and these scenes feature some of the most ingeniously realized gags ever put on film- the most legendary being the one in which Keaton finds a railroad tie atop the tracks in front of the train, so he carefully climbs down onto the train's cowcatcher and uses another railroad tie to knock the first one off the tracks. Like so many of the film's great moments (which are plentiful) this gag is less about gut-busting hilarity than engineering- we marvel at the simple ingenuity of it, with the added charge that Keaton did even the most dangerous stunts himself. There’s also a nonchalance about the film that's refreshing, a charm that takes its cue from its star's unassuming demeanor, that allows even the most intricate gag or potentially deadly stunt to feel like a throwaway, as though instead of a show-stopping moment it's all just another annoyance to this character's routine. Which, of course, only makes it funnier.

10. GATES OF HEAVEN (1978)

Roger Ebert may sometimes be prone to going overboard with praise, but when he’s right, he’s right, and he’s 100% right about Gates of Heaven, a movie he’s been stumping for for more than three decades. Fans of Errol Morris know what I’m talking about, but for the rest of you- yes, it really is that good. Morris may use pet cemeteries as his starting point, but ultimately it's about the ways in which we deal with the death of those we love, and by extension with our own mortality. Morris has always been one of the most patient of documentarians, and one of the chief pleasures of Gates of Heaven is in the distinctive and colorful ways the various interviewees talk, from the bone-weary resignation of failed cemetery owner Floyd McClure to the regurgitated management philosophies of Philip Harberts to (especially) ornery old Florence Rasmussen. And as Morris interviews various owners of dead animals, they reflect on how important these pets were in their lives as a source of companionship and unconditional love- sure, these people sound a little crazy for projecting these feelings onto animals, but simply by presenting these people the film asks us how many people can offer the same kind of loyalty these pet owners felt from their pets? In the end, this film offers no small amount of plain-spoken philosophy, as when one pet owner states, "there's your pet, your pet's dead. But what happened to the thing that made it move?" No film I've seen is this profound about the ways in which people seek meaning not in art or centuries-old wisdom, but in the lives (and deaths) of others.

SPECIAL MENTION: DECALOGUE (1989)

This being a “best movies” list, it’s debatable whether Krzystzof Kieslowski’s The Decalogue really qualifies, since while it has played theatrically all over the world, it was originally intended as a ten-part miniseries for Polish television (call this “special mention” a compromise). What’s undeniable, however, is that this is one of the major works of the twentieth century. Decalogue was inspired by The Ten Commandments, but one of its great achievements is that it views the Commandments less as religious doctrine than key moral tenets that govern most modern-day societies. So rather than trafficking in pious, preachy parables, Kieslowski and co-writer Krzystzof Piesiewicz examine the ways in which people in the modern world struggle with these age-old decrees, not always successfully. In one of the episodes, a girl who has grown close to her widower father must decide how to deal with her feelings after she discovers that he isn't her biological father after all; in another, the unfaithful wife of a gravely ill man finds out that she is pregnant by her lover, and tells her husband's doctor that the unborn child's fate will be decided by whether or not he believes her husband will die. And in the series’ most beloved episode, a teenage voyeur falls in love with a woman he spies on, and decides to become part of her life. The way this film plays out defies all expectation, yet in retrospect the events seem almost inevitable. The Decalogue may or may not be an according-to-Hoyle movie, but I’m guessing that when the history of moving-image-thingies is written, The Decalogue will occupy a place of honor.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Ten

Contributor: Paul Clark

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

3. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The year 2001 has long since come and gone, but the movie named for it seems to exist outside of time. There was nothing like it before and there’s been nothing quite like it since, although Stanley Kubrick’s space odyssey has influenced filmmakers as dissimilar as David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson. Ranging from the dawn of man to beyond the infinite, it’s larger than life and should be experienced that way, preferably on 70mm, as I once saw it at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles. (A screening at which it seemed self-evident that the intermission coming rather late in the game is timed perfectly for the audience to slip out to the parking lot and get into the proper headspace for the grand finale.) You could fit all of its dialogue on a greeting card, and little of it means anything at all. Kubrick’s epic is all about exploding the structure of narrative film, marrying big, bold imagery to minimalist plotting – it’s about a filmmaker reaching for the stars. Kubrick’s reach may have exceeded his grasp, but he took us on a hell of a ride along the way. (SVD)

To watch 2001 is to marvel at how big Stanley Kubrick’s ideas really were. Most movies, even the best ones, are content to confine themselves to the concerns of man, but the scope of 2001 stands astride human history, observing the beginning before leaping forward to behold the beginning of the end. He did this through bravura filmmaking to be sure, but also an uncanny ability to make his ideas visual rather than spelling them out in dialogue. Long portions of 2001 play without dialogue, and when the human characters speak, they have almost nothing of consequence to say. They go about their business as momentous events play around them, and even after they learn of an important extraterrestrial presence on the moon, they pass the time by prattling on about the sandwiches they’ve been given. Of course the effects are lovely, even today -- a feat that’s all the more impressive for the fact that Kubrick and his technicians had to invent many of them for the movie. But the technical wizardry doesn’t stand alone: rather, it's part of a directorial tour de force that was made with genuine care by one of the most gifted filmmakers ever to pick up a camera. (PC)

2. THE GODFATHER (1972)

There’s no real debate – maybe there hasn’t been for 35 years – about whether or not The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are masterpieces of Hollywood filmmaking. The only real debate is which of the two is superior. Many critics and viewers simply refuse to choose and lump the two together as a single film; it’s a decision I can fully understand and support. Most critics, though, when asked to pick just one, go for the second film, with its epic scope, its ramped-up internecine complexity, and its darker vision of violence and betrayal. When the wind is south-southwest, I agree with them; the two films are of such phenomenal merit that any given day, either one could be considered the greatest movie ever made. But if I had to carve in stone my favorite, it would be the first. It may have not had the engaging complexity of its sequel, and it left its ending far more ambiguous than the blood-soaked tragedy of Part II, but its cast was note-perfect in every single scene, anchored by the monumental presence of Marlon Brando, and its structure was untouchable, serving as a moving textbook of how to craft a great film. It built the towering edifice that its sequel would so brilliantly destroy, and it was one of those rare films that arrived in the world instantly recognizable as a thing of greatness. If Part II shocked the world by surpassing it, it’s because The Godfather was so great it seemed impossible to surpass. (LP)

I can’t recall if I ever posted this story before...but what the heck, I’m outta here soon anyway, so: I once had a girlfriend (now sadly and tragically departed, and way, way too young) who was obsessed with both parts of The Godfather. During our years together, we watched the whole epic dozens of times, and eventually came to know every scene and line by heart (especially Luca Brasi’s stated hope for “a masculine child” on the day of Connie’s wedding, a line delivered with absolutely believable nervousness by actor Lenny Montana, reportedly due to his own absolute nervousness on the day of filming). Very few movies stand up to so many repeat viewings...and then one night, a freshly-struck print of The Godfather screened at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, and I was astonished to discover even more sumptuous visual detail packed into the frame than I’d ever noticed before, which only heightened my awareness of the nearly unparalleled genius of the film...as well as the staggering crappiness of The Godfather: Part III. (AO)

And now, the Screengrab's pick for the Number One Film Of All Time...

1. McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)

Robert Altman's take on the Western is as upside-down as Sam Peckinpah's. Where The Wild Bunch is epic and bloody, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is about being small and transient in the great landscape of the West. As big as John McCabe's dreams are, they're only in his head. All the poetry in his soul doesn't mean anything in this tiny community grasping at civilization. His final stand, his big gun battle, is as unimportant to the town of Presbyterian Church as Icarus plunging into the sea in Pieter Brueghal's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. W.H. Auden wrote of this painting in his poem "Musee des Beaux Arts":

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In Presbyterian Church, the burning of the unfinished titular church takes precedence over McCabe's last stand. And there's always something else happening when humanity takes its last stand. Where Peckinpah mixed the myth with realism, Robert Altman always preferred the real. (HC)

You know what always gets me? When Mr. "I don't make deals!" says of McCabe, "That man never killed anybody," he sounds as if he were describing a character defect. The movies have always been populated by guys like this, and it's sobering to realize how many times the movies they were in didn't recoil from them in dismay; on more occasions than I think I want to know, these guys were the heroes! By the end of the movie, McCabe will have killed somebody, all right, before settling in to be covered over with snow as if he were a statue commemorating the town that he'd built. The town will go on, and the woman he loves may eventually notice that he's not around anymore, but at the moment of his death, she barely knows what planet she's on. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Leonard Pearce, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Clippy Strikes Back: The Scariest Technology In Cinema History (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

TRON (1982)

Older brothers usually get to be know-it-alls (and, of course, we’re usually right), but my Big Bro credibility took a huge hit in the ‘80s when I told my kid brother in no uncertain terms that he was absolutely, completely wrong in his crazy belief that Roger Ebert once gave this Disney science-fiction oddity a four-star review. But, though it pained me then (and now) to admit, my brother was absolutely right: Ebert raved about Tron, calling it a “dazzling...technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun” in its anthropomorphized depiction of the inner workings of computer technology, starring Jeff Bridges as a programmer trapped in a trippy day-glo software universe Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski would surely appreciate. At the time, of course, director Steven Lisberger’s tale of a Master Control Program bent on domination was fairly unique; that and the film’s visual palette were groundbreaking enough to explain why Ebert (and my brother) could forgive the fairly colorless acting and writing...but it was the cool Disneyland theme park attraction and the super-cool video game that finally won me over to the wonders of Tron. Nowadays, of course, it’s the other way around as the Master Control Program that runs Hollywood routinely morphs video games and theme park attractions into run-of-the-mill movies, computers are ubiquitous and CGI long ago lost its new car smell...but, hey, at least good ol’ Roger Ebert still knows how to flummox me with an occasional WTF? 4-star review! (AO)

SHIVERS (1975)

For his first feature, David Cronenberg came up with an idea that so completely sums up the recurring concepts of his early work -- the horror at the body and mutations, the hang-ups about sexual repression and sexual release -- that it's kind of remarkable that he ever revved himself up again to make another. Set mostly inside a high-tech luxury apartment complex outside Montreal, it begins with a scene that suggests an old-school porno film that's gone off its trolley: a burly, bearded old man assaults a young woman in what looks like a Catholic schoolgirl outfit and, after stripping himself to the waist, sets about vivisecting her. It turns out that he's a scientist who has developed a parasite that, once introduced into the human body, frees the host from anything remotely resembling inhibitions. The girl is his test subject, who has been entirely too efficient at spreading the parasite around to various neighbors, so that by the end of the movie, the whole complex has turned into one enormous writhing, drooling, mindless orgy on the move. This concept is especially disturbing to those viewers shallow enough to notice that the casting department has not done its job with an eye towards assembling the ideal orgy of a Skinemax audience's dreams. Don't let anybody tell you that Montreal in the mid-70s was suffering from a shortage of unsightly people. (PN)

DARK STAR (1974)

Made while he and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon were completing their USC film school postgraduate work, John Carpenter’s debut feature Dark Star paid amusing homage to Kubrick’s seminal 2001 in its portrait of machinery gone awry. Aboard a spaceship whose astronauts have been tasked with eliminating unstable stars in order to pave the way for future colonization, the computer motherboard goes straight-up crazy and a rogue bomb goes even crazier, attempting to detonate in the ship’s loading bay despite the crew’s best efforts to prevent such a catastrophe. Unlike 2001 or O’Bannon’s later screenwriting hit Alien (which borrowed liberally from this film’s premise), Carpenter’s maiden directorial outing is played for tongue-in-cheek laughs rather than chills, and rather ramshackle ones at that. Yet despite an upfront lack of seriousness, this space saga’s conception of technology remains decidedly pessimistic, its story’s faulty equipment conveying an underlying fear of the potential calamity that awaits those foolish enough to count on CPUs for their safety. (NS)

COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)

This sci-fi film can be watched in its entirety on YouTube, and it doesn't lose much there. Directed by the erratic Joseph Sargent, whose other credits include Jaws: The Revenge but also The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and the 1989 TV film Day One (a good docudrama about the ultimate evil technology story, the Manhattan Project), it's not a visually distinguished movie, but its treatment of the ever-popular computers-are-our-masters theme, specifically geared to the nuclear age, is impressively spiky. Dr. Forbin, played by The Young and the Restless mainstay Eric Braeden, has perfected the ultimate missile-defense system, a supercomputer called Colossus that will have absolute control over America's nuclear arsenal and is impervious to attack. As soon as it's switched on, Colossus announces that it senses the existence of its own doppelganger -- Guardian, a Soviet supercomputer with the same function and capabilities. Furthermore, Colossus and Guardian make contact with each other and decide that they should join forces to protect the planet, shutting out the middle man -- i.e., us. Various attempts are made, under Dr. Forbin's direction, to override, penetrate, and otherwise shut down the computers, with results that only raise the question, "What part of 'impervious to attack' do you not understand?" In the end, Colossus, after detonating a couple of missiles just to remind us that it means business, assures the human population that it wants only the best for the world over which it now holds complete control, always a reassuring sentiment whether you hear it from a supercomputer with nuclear capability or Billy Mays. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

Clippy Strikes Back: The Scariest Technology In Cinema History! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

This week, youngsters (and the young at heart) will be treated to the sight of a giant space robot tearing up San Francisco (in 3-D!) in Monsters vs. Aliens (click here for review).

But last week, something really scary happened: my computer completely shut down thanks to some nasty virus, leaving me completely laptop-less for three long, frightening days (right in the middle of SXSW!), during which time I realized I no longer have the ability to think straight, remember things, communicate or even feed and dress myself without my little cybernetic soul mate in good working order.

Fortunately, the fine people at PC Guru in Austin, TX got me up and running...but it was definitely a scary reminder of how much it’s gonna suck when Facebook finally becomes self-aware and turns all our computers, ATMs, DVRs, MP3s and GPS systems against us.

So, as a public service, your (mostly) human friends here at the Screengrab figured now would be as good a time as any to whip up some post-Y2K panic with our list of THE SCARIEST TECHNOLOGY IN CINEMA HISTORY!

METROPOLIS (1927)

Fritz Lang's titanic silent sci-fi masterpiece uses a look derived from a mix of Art Deco and Amazing Stories cover designs to decorate a political allegory that Lang said was inspired by his first sight of New York City, which seems to have fried some of the wiring in his central cortex. (If the old boy were to come back and see what the place looks like today, we'd have to find him a job biting the heads off chickens.) Society consists of the rich who live above ground in glittering skyscrapers and the poor who labor and live in underground tunnels, sort of like in Titanic. The whole shebang is run by Johan, a capitalist uber-lord; meanwhile, down below, Metropolis has found its answer to Samuel Gompers in the beautiful Maria, a saintly labor activist who is rallying the workers. The plot kicks into high gear when Johan's breathtakingly goofy son, Freder, gets a look at Maria and is instantly radicalized. Instead of taking the usual tack of industrialist tyrants in this situation and buying his kid a motorcycle and a lap dance, Johan turns to his trusty house mad scientist, Rotwang, who creates a trouble-making robot duplicate of Maria, in a scene that anticipates The Bride of Frankenstein and Dr. Strangelove in about equal measure, and turns 'er loose, with results that prove instructional for one and all. (PN)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

Its red eye glowing, its voice calm and soothing, HAL 9000 – on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery – remains, forty-one years after 2001: A Space Odyssey’s debut, cinema’s most iconic piece of evil technology. Or, at least, the sentient HAL is one of the most dangerous pieces of technology to ever be presented on screen, as its homicidal tendencies stem primarily from a desire to fulfill preprogrammed mission directives – aims which are threatened by the plan of astronauts Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Poole (Gary Lockwood) to disconnect it. The fact that self-preservation in service of duty is HAL’s motivation to kill problematizes any attempt to cast it as purely evil, especially since its survival instinct, when viewed alongside its emotive speech (contrasted with the men’s monotonous, monosyllabic utterances), marks the computer as distinctly human-like. Nonetheless, even if HAL isn’t immoral, it most certainly is frighteningly lethal. And rarely have the movies presented a more harrowing, intimidating vision of technology-run-amok than the sight of HAL covertly, calculatingly reading the lips of the scheming astronauts, and soon thereafter sending Poole spinning into the oblivion of space. (NS)

WESTWORLD (1973)

While re-watching Westworld in preparation for this list, I recovered a long-lost childhood memory. I’m on a train with my family when bandits on horseback pull us over, board the train and take our money. This really happened, although I should probably explain that it was supposed to happen – it was no ordinary train ride, but rather a reenactment of the Great Train Robbery. I remember being terrified as the bandits prowled the aisle, brandishing their pistols, bandannas concealing most of their faces – but not so terrified that I actually relinquished the dollar my mother had slipped me so that I could enjoy being robbed along with everyone else. Why am I telling you this? Because, like Westworld, this was a simulation of life in the Old West intended to give us all the thrills without any of the consequences. As far as I know, there were no actual robots involved, but how can I be sure? The other thing it has in common with Westworld is that it scared me as a kid. Now that I’ve seen Westworld as an adult, I realize it’s about as scary as a visit to Six Gun City. The movie serves up some of writer/director Michael Crichton’s patented technophobia with a formula that would be duplicated to better effect in Jurassic Park, as visitors to a high-tech theme park find themselves terrorized by the robots meant to amuse them. It does have one thing going for it: Yul Brynner’s iconic black-hatted Gunslinger, who did the unstoppable killer robot thing more than a decade before The Terminator. (SVD)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

In screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's world, human beings don't really need technology to screw up their lives, but in this movie they get some help anyway, courtesy of Lacuna, Inc. and its mind-wipe service, which enables the client to have his memory scrubbed of anything that he feels is holding him back or causing him undue pain. Jim Carrey, at his most subdued, is the loser hero who discovers that Clementine (Kate Winslet), the old flame who shook up his life, has had her memories of their time together erased, possibly as a lark, and who opts to have his own mind scrubbed clean of its memories of her, not realizing how hard he'll fight to hang onto any traces of having had her in his life when the process begins. Kaufman and director Michel Gondry manage to wring romantic comedy out of what may be the most painful of romantic truths: everyone wants to be remembered, but the memories of what was most important to you may be the ones that you'd sometimes most like to be rid of. (PN)

Click Here For Part Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Set Your DVR!: December 8 - 15, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

First off, many apologies for my absence last week. With houseguests (I call them “Mom and Dad”) around for a few days past the weekend, I didn’t have any time to do the research or write the column, and I figured that very few of you want to read me repeating variations on “I got nothin’ but I sure like booze.” Because I’m all about keeping the high standards around here.
So to change things up a wee bit, I’m going to list a schedule and then write about sentence or two about the movies at the end. Or a few of them, at least. Here’s what’s worth watching in the upcoming week!

Monday, 12/8:
Well, I got nothin’. But I sure like the booze.

Tuesday, 12/9:
5/6 am: Out of the Past on TCM.
5:25/6:25 am: Les Enfants du Paradis on IFC
8:40/9:40 am: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
12:05/1:05 pm: Les Enfants du Paradis on IFC.
3:35/4:35 pm: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.

Wednesday, 12/10:
5/6 am: Cat People on TCM.
6:30/7:30 am: Curse of the Cat People on TCM.
6:35/7:35 am: The Quiet American on IFC.
1/2 pm: The Quiet American on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm: 2001: A Space Odyssey on TCM.
3/4 pm: Vanishing Point on FMC.
5/6 pm: 2010 on TCM.

Thursday, 12/11:
7/8 pm: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
11:30 pm CST/12:30 am EST: CQ on IFC.

Friday, 12/12:
3/4 am: Cop Land on TNT.
2:30/3:30 pm: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
8:45/9:45 pm: Death and the Maiden on IFC.
10:30/11:30 pm: Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster on VH1CL.

Saturday, 12/13:
8:45/9:45 am: Brother’s Keeper on IFC
2/3 pm: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
7/8 pm: Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster on VH1CL.
11:30 pm CST/12:30 am EST: Elephant on IFC.

Sunday, 12/14:
5:30/6:30 am: Elephant on IFC.
7/8 am: Jules et Jim on IFC.
4/5 pm: The Wild Bunch on AMC.
8/9 pm: Dead Calm on CHILLER.
9:30/10:30 pm: The Wild Bunch on AMC.
11 pm CST/12 am EST: Dead Calm on CHILLER.
11 pm CST/12 am EST: The Godless Girl on TCM.

Monday, 12/15:
1:15/2:15 am: Das Boot on TCM.
9:35/10:35 am: Mystery Train on IFC.
2:45/3:45 pm: Mystery Train on IFC.
6:25/7:25 pm: George Washington on IFC.

The Movies:
2001: A Space Odyssey on TCM: 12/10 at 2:30 pm CST. Do you need a blurb about this movie? I doubt it.

2010 on TCM: 12/10 at 5 pm CST. I don’t think this is a great movie, but my god, it’s full of stars.

Brother’s Keeper on IFC: 12/13 at 8:45 am and 2 pm CST. Fantastic documentary on sibling murder and rural family values.

Cat People on TCM: 12/10 at 5 am CST. Val Lewton & Jacques Tourneur’s no-budget horror/suspense flick.

Cop Land on TNT: 12/12 at 3 am CST. I hate recommending movies that have almost definitely been cut for cable broadcast, but Cop Land is fairly surprising, being a Sylvester Stallone movie that’s actually pretty decent. I could be grading on a curve here.

CQ on IFC: 12/11 at 11:30 pm CST. Roman Coppola’s love-letter to the films of the 60s is not as bad as some argue, although it’s nowhere near as good as it could have been. Jeremy Davies may be the reason for both. I like the scene that copies a scene from La Dolce Vita from another angle.

Curse of the Cat People on TCM: 12/10 at 6:30 am CST. What’s that? Can’t get enough Cat People? Well, here’s a second helping.

Das Boot on TCM: 12/15 at 1:15 am CST. Shockingly, it's not actually about shoewear.

The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC: 12/11 at 7 pm CST and 12/12 at 2:30 pm CST. Fuck a bunch of Keanu Reeves and his entirely unnecessary remake.

Dead Calm on CHILLER: 12/14 at 8 pm and 11 pm CST. Claustrophobic little suspense movie that takes place on one little boat out in the middle of the ocean.

Death and the Maiden on IFC: 12/12 at 8:45 pm CST. People may ask: why are Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley considered such great actors? Well, they made this movie, an underappreciated Roman Polanski film about torture and its consequences.

The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC: 12/9 at 8:40 am and 3:35 pm CST. I saw an early showing of this when I lived in North Carolina, some ten years ago. It’s a micro-budget indie based on the Charles Whitman shooting at UT, and I seem to remember thinking that it was pretty good, although it went off the rails towards the end.

Elephant on IFC: 12/13 at 11:30 pm and 12/14 at 5:30 am. See Leonard’s write-up.

George Washington on IFC: 12/15 at 6:25 pm. Somewhere between Days of Heaven and Killer of Sheep.

The Godless Girl on TCM: 12/14 at 11 pm. Cecil B. DeMille’s last silent film from 1929. That’s all I know.

Jules et Jim on IFC: 12/14 at 7 am. Confession: I can’t stand this movie. Truffaut directed a number of the finest films of the French New Wave, but this one drives me nuts. This shouldn't keep you from seeing it. There's a reason so many people like it; I'm willing to accept that it's my blind spot that's the problem. But GOD I hate this movie.

Les Enfants du Paradis on IFC: 12/9 at 5:25 am and 12:05 pm. One of the great films of French cinema.

Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster on VH1CL: 12/12 at 10:30 pm and 12/13 at 7 pm. Entertaining even for non-fans of Metallica. Maybe even more so. This is what happens when multi-gazillionaires have trouble coming up with something to bitch about for their fans’ pleasure.

Mystery Train on IFC: 12/15 at 9:35 am and 2:45 pm. Mostly great Jarmusch flick about the creepy goings-on in a Memphis hotel overseen by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Out of the Past on TCM: 12/9 at 5 am. One of the blackest and bleakest film noirs, starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Directed by the great Jacques Tourneur.

The Quiet American on IFC: 12/10 at 6:35 am and 1 pm. Decent film about Vietnam and betrayal starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser and based on a book by Graham Greene.

Vanishing Point on FMC: 12/10 at 3 pm. Must-see little existential car chase movie.

The Wild Bunch on AMC: 12/14 at 4 pm and 9:30 pm. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the best American movie, period. It's possibly the best movie made by anyone. On one level, it’s about bad men in bad times with a bad end coming at them fast. But that’s only one level.

When Good Directors Go Bad: Ryan's Daughter (1970, David Lean)

Paul Clark — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

By the late 1960s, old-fashioned epics had fallen on hard times. With the counterculture movement in full swing, fewer young moviegoers were interested in large-scale entertainments, with sweeping vistas and larger-than-life filmmaking. However, Hollywood has always been a little slow to catch up with popular tastes, and this led to a string of big-budget flops, as the roadshow musicals and bloated period pictures failed to rope in audiences who went wild for The Graduate and Easy Rider. But if anyone could still make an old-school epic under these circumstances, it was David Lean, coming off the award-winning blockbusters Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Unfortunately, Ryan’s Daughter wasn’t remotely up to the standard of the director’s best work.

From the beginning, Ryan’s Daughter had problems. The filmmakers took a suspiciously long time to cast the film, with name actors like Marlon Brando and Peter O’Toole turning down the role of the British Maj. Doryan before up-and-comer Christopher Jones was cast. But things got far worse once production began. Lean was a notorious perfectionist, often taking hours to set up a single shot, which angered several of the film’s stars, with Leo McKern commenting, “I don’t like to be paid 500 pounds a week for sitting down and playing Scrabble.” And Jones’ acting talent- or, more appropriately, the lack thereof- caused friction between him and both Lean and leading lady Sarah Miles.

Of course, stories like this are nothing new in show business. Moreover, had the movie turned out well none of this would have mattered. Unfortunately, Ryan’s Daughter was a flop with critics and audiences, to the point that Lean didn’t direct another film for more than a decade. The film is a lumbering bore, without so much as an interesting character to hold the audience’s interest. Naturally, this being a Lean movie, Ryan’s Daughter is often gorgeous to look at, but that’s hardly enough to tide the audience over for upwards of three hours.

In fact, I’d say the visuals are part of the problem, or more accurately, that Lean cares more for the pictoral beauty of the film than he does for the people who inhabit it. Now, I realize that this criticism has also been levied at several films of another notorious perfectionist, Stanley Kubrick. The difference is that if you look at films such as 2001 and Barry Lyndon, you’ll see that Kubrick’s style demands a degree of distance from the characters, and the visuals are a large part of this. By contrast, Lean means to tell a human story in Ryan’s Daughter, and this distance only hinders his ability to do so.

Consider the early scene in which Rosy Ryan (played by Miles) sees her former teacher Charles Shaughnessy (Mitchum) after he comes home from a conference in Britain. As Rosy has long felt love for Charles- the man she will eventually marry, mind you- you’d think it might be good to see her reaction to his arrival. However, Lean’s staging of the event is so clumsy that he forgets to show us. One minute, Rosy is alone at the shoreline, then suddenly Lean cuts to an extreme long shot as Charles walks into the frame, so that they’re hardly more than specks on the beach moving toward each other. It’s only after they come together and begin talking that he cuts to their conversation. I wish I could say this was atypical of Lean’s style in Ryan’s Daughter, but this isn’t the case. Time and again, Lean’s characters are upstaged by the landscapes that surround them.

Then again, perhaps extreme long shots would’ve been the best way to deal with Christopher Jones, so that the audience couldn’t have seen how untalented and inexpressive an actor he was. Of course, this was hardly the first time a director was faced with the challenge of a difficult leading man, but Lean never figures out how to successfully work around this. Initially, the film gives most of Jones’ dialogue to a subordinate, but once he embarks on his affair with Rosy this becomes impossible, so Lean resorts to swelling music, longing glances from Miles, and cutaways to nature. But worst of all are the scenes in which Maj. Doryan flashes back to the battlefield- Jones screws up his face and flails around, but never convinces us that there’s anything underneath the surface. Jones’ performance is so inept that our antipathy toward him extends to the character itself, and by extension to Rosy, who by forsaking Robert Mitchum for this clown looks less like an impetuous youth than a horny little fool.

Speaking of fools, if Christopher Jones’ performance is inept, John Mills’ is downright embarrassing. Mills plays Michael, a local oaf who sadly has nobody to grapple with, in what surely has to be one of the most ignominious performances ever to net an Oscar. But even if Mills’ hammy turn isn’t completely Lean’s fault, the way the character is used has to be, as Michael functions as a comic mirror to the events of the story, eavesdropping on the lovers and following them around at pivotal moments. It’s a cheesy touch on the part of Lean and frequent screenwriter Robert Bolt, one that they should have known better than to include.

All of this isn’t to say that Ryan’s Daughter doesn’t have good points. For one thing, Miles’s and Mitchum’s performances would distinguish a film that told this story on a more intimate level (especially Mitchum’s). However, Lean’s style here is so unnecessarily grandiose that we lose sight of any reason why we should care about them or anything else we see onscreen. By the time the film actually justifies the magnitude of its scope, it’s far too late. There’s a spectacular sequence in which the townspeople aid a band of IRA fighters in bringing weapons ashore in the middle of a storm. But impressive though it is, all I could think of was how difficult it must have been to film. And that’s just about the last thing one should be thinking about during a scene like this.

OST: "There Will Be Blood"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The recent direction in which Radiohead has turned causes much split opinion, as might be expected from one of the biggest bands in the world. Some feel that the more avant-garde turn their music has taken is a sign of growth, development, and change for the better, a step away from the simple but distinctive pop craftsmanship that marked their early days and towards an entirely new sensibility, more attuned to the voice of modern minimalist composers than to the pop or even indie-rock tradition. Others think it's been a disaster, a pretentious and overwrought plunge into the alienatingly highbrow at the cost of the band's credibility, relatability and listenability. Whatever one's opinion (and I'm certainly in the former camp), a lot of tears have been shed over the fate of the band's guitarist, Jonny Greenwood. Though he's been vocally supportive of Radiohead's direction and has adapted his playing admirably well to the demands of the more stripped-down, electronic-influenced work, many have wondered -- especially given the sound of lead singer Thom Yorke's solo work -- if he was fully behind the shift in tone. But after the release of the stunning soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, no one should worry, least of all Greenwood himself. It's a masterful album, perfectly suited to the material onscreen, that shows how fully possessed he is by moody minimalism and dissonant, striking tones.

There were legitimate worries when Greenwood was announced as the composer to the score to There Will Be Blood. A number of people, myself included, questioned the prominent role assigned to Aimee Mann's music in Magnolia; boosters found it fitting, a natural extension of the movie's story. Others found it extremely inclusive, smacking of the cart driving the horse. It turns out they have nothing to worry about: Greenwood's score in There Will Be Blood is as subtle and insinuating as Mann's songs in Magnolia were obvious and intrusive. From the first squalling, snakeline chords the the last smothering cluster of strings, it's a tightly controlled, sinister, and utterly appropriate score, a musical realization of the struggles and excesses in Daniel Plainview's soul. While the movie itself is epic, the score is minute and precise, coming from a stripped-down version of a full orchestra and delivering a terrible sense of struggle from its very first notes. At times, Greenwood almost seems to be fighting a horrible battle to make the dissonant blasts and squalling notes force meaning and emotion from the barren landscapes of the film's oil-town settings: there is pain and effort in this music as real and as clear as Plainview's horribly willful efforts to drag himself out of a hole in the ground with a wooden leg. Some notes sound relentlessly, again and again, with a furious insistence worthy of Ligeti; other notes creep loosely around the edges of perception, bringing the entire thing an almost ambient quality like Brian Eno's instrumental efforts. It's an astonishing piece of work on every level, instantly marking Greenwood as a force to be reckoned with as a film composer. (Unfortunately, the presence of a slight three-minute quote from his own "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", an avant-garde piece influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, disqualified the widely praised score from Oscar contention.)

BEST TRACKS: the stirring, magnificent (and ironically claustrophobic) "Open Spaces", which opens the album; the angry, jerking, ,almost psychotic "Eat Him By His Own Light"; and the lonely, dismal, haunting "Daniel Plainview" are standouts here, but give the entire album a listen, all the way through, divorced from the context of the film: it's a testament to how well it's done that, as perfectly as it works onscreen, it holds up amazingly well on its own.

Smarter People Than Us Pick the Five Most Realistic Science Fiction Movies

Phil Nugent — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

To celebrate the success of Iron Man, which apparently does a much better job of realistically depicting how a man might go about turning himself into an armored guilded missle than, say, Spider-Man did in its speculation on the probable effects of being bitten by a radioactive spider ("Mommy, hiw come he's not turning brown and lying crumpled on the floor weeping?"), New Scientist has compiled a list of "five science fiction movies that get the science right." This is one of those areas where we'll just have to take their word for it, along with whether the kids in Spellbound got those words spelled right or not, or what circumstances would make it possible for a strange man to flirt with Julia Roberts on the street and not wind up in traction. It may be no surprise that 2001 leads the list; it is, after all, an acknowledged masterpiece of the genre whose "strikingly realistic depiction of space travel" was forged in a collaboration between a serious sci-fi author and a cerebral, perfectionist director. And besides, it always puts us to sleep, just like science class. (New Scientist notes that the film's "crew members are shown coping with the boredom and routine of a long, straightforward trek across empty space", which sure is one way of putting it.)

More surprising, perhaps, are the thumb's-up for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which accurately "depicts memory as essentially a network of links," its distant cousin Solaris (either version), and Gattaca, which posits a "grimly plausible vision of a society dominated by genetic prejudice", and which some may consider an even greater film than 2001, simply because it's even more boring. The there's Alien, which impresses for the thought given to the life cycle of its title character, "in particular for the finer details of its life cycle." Cynics and subscribers to The Daily Worker will also point to the film's cold-eyed view of the characters' unfeeling employers and the nature of blue-collar labor in space, though the fact that two of the lowest-level, bluest-collared workers appear to belong to a union now clearly stamps the film as a pre-1980s period piece. On the other hand, extensive study into the behavior of people in emergency situations has concluded that it is true that if you stick half a dozen folks aboard a spaceship and have them plot their escape from a terrifying, homicidal shape-shifting monster, one of them will wander off to look for the cat.

Memoirs of a Movie Ape

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Being a mime in the movie business usually entails getting punched in the face, but Dan Richter managed to parlay his trapped-in-an-invisible-box skills into a key role in “one of the most influential and important sequences in film history.” No, not the tennis scene from Blow-Up; you’ll remember Richter for hooting, beating his chest and – most famously – throwing a bone in the air.

Not only did Richter play “Moonwatcher,” the ape-man who invents weapons of mass destruction in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, he also choreographed the “Dawn of Man” sequence that opens the picture. “It so happened I was teaching private classes in mime in London at the time,” Richter told our man Bilge Ebiri at New York magazine’s Vulture blog. “Anyway, I was asked if I would go out and let Stanley pick my brain. I said, "If you give me twenty minutes, a stage, leotards, and some towels, I can show you how to do it." So he hired me to choreograph it, and eventually talked me into playing the part of Moonwatcher as well.”

Most of us probably assumed notorious control freak Kubrick trained his own apes for the film or even built a set of mecha-monkeys in his basement, but in fact Richter conducted his own little Full Metal Jacket boot camp for his fellow ape-men. And although he didn’t design the makeup – that was Stuart Freeborn’s work – he’s still a little miffed that Planet of the Apes wound up with the Oscar for Best Makeup. “It was so below what we were doing! Also, I'll tell you something else: We had stuff stolen. I can't say it was Planet of the Apes, but they were the only other movie shooting at the same time and same place we were. Stanley and I even had someone steal a mask and some ape hands right out from under our noses on the backlot, where someone had hid in a drainage ditch.”

If only the damn dirty apes had kept their stinkin’ paws on, that never would have happened.

In Other Blogs: The Musical

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Cinematical asks the musical question, “Have you had enough of musicals based on movies?” According to Monika Bartyzel, “Variety reports that Bubble Boy is getting some workshop musical treatment. Bubble freakin' Boy…Just you wait -- one day we'll get to see Carmen Electra's boobs bouncing around not in 3D splendor, but rather a musical version of Scary Movie. She'll run through the audience, a light spray of water hitting her as she tries to run from the killer in her underwear ... while singing.”

Movie City Indie pays tribute to the 40th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a veritable galaxy of links to online goodies, including some of the reviews Kubrick’s epic received on first release. Check out the “don’t bother me, kid” tone of then-New York Times film critic (and Pauline Kael nemesis) Renata Adler’s take: “Its real energy seem to derive from that bespectacled prodigy reading comic books around the block. The whole sensibility is intellectual fifties child: chess games, bodybuilding exercises, beds on the spacecraft that look like camp bunks, other beds that look like Egyptian mummies, Richard Strauss music, time games, Strauss waltzes, Howard Johnson's, birthday phone calls... [T]he uncompromising slowness of the movie makes it hard to sit through without talking—and people on all sides when I saw it were talking almost throughout the film. Very annoying. With all its attention to detail—a kind of reveling in its own I.Q.—the movie acknowledged no obligation to validate its conclusion for those, me for example, who are not science-fiction buffs.”

At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir shares an elevator with Wong Kar-wei and Reggie Jackson. It sounds like the set-up for either a joke or a Jim Jarmusch movie, and ends up being more like the latter when nothing much happens. “How were we going to explain to Wong Kar-wai who Reggie Jackson was? And how were we to keep living in a universe that contained both of them, the Chinese art-film god who makes waking dreams and the onetime Yankee superstar who seemed to single-handedly save a dying city in the late '70s?”

In anticipation of Shine a Light, In the Company of Glenn looks back at Rolling Stones movies past, and finds Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One still fascinates. “The director had initially approached John Lennon about his starring in a biopic of Trotsky, but Lennon didn't like where Godard was coming from one bit, so Godard turned to the Stones. The movie alternates between querulous agitprop skits, many featuring Godard's then-wife Anna Wiazemsky, and the ‘Stones rolling,’ as it were, rehearsing the song that would become Sympathy for the Devil. A lot of folks find this footage awfully tedious, but I've always been fascinated by it…The way that [Brian] Jones wanders in and out of the proceedings is the most voyeuristically attractive part of the film for Stones obsessive.”

And finally, this week’s List-o-Mania entry…well, I really don’t know what to say about it. It’s The 12 Most Painful Movie Castrations Ever. Why can’t we come up with ideas like this?

Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died, at 90, in his adopted home of Sri Lanka. Clarke broke into publishing through Astounding Science Fiction magazine and later served as "science adviser" to the British adventure comic strip Dan Dare, eventually becoming revered as a major figure of the genre as the author of such books as Childhood's End. To movie lovers, though, Clarke will always be best remembered for his work on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. That movie grew out of "The Sentinel", a story Clarke first wrote in 1948 as an unsuccessful entry in a BBC competition; later published under the title "Sentinel of Eternity", it introduced the concept of the monolith which would anchor the screenplay that Clarke and Kubrick eventually assembled, drawing on other stories by Clarke, such as "Encounter at Dawn." While Kubrick made the movie, Clarke wrote a novel, also called 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was published shortly after the novel's release. Technically, the book, being based on the screenplay, might be called a novelization, but it was intended not as a cheap tie-in but as a work that could stand on its own while also serving as a complementary work to the movie.

Although 2001-the-movie was very much "a Stanley Kubrick film", it raised Clarke's profile immeasurably outside the sci-fi ghetto, even as it linked his name to the director's forever more. They never worked together again, but in 1972 Clarke published The Lost Worlds of 2001, a book that included his observations on the writing of the screenplay and the production of the movie, as well as material from the various drafts of the screenplay that didn't make it into the finished film. In the early 1980s, he published a sequel, 2010: Odyssey II, which subsequently led to a 1984 movie version written and directed by Peter Hyams. (Yet another book, The Odyssey File, subtitled "The Making of 2010", is actually a collection of Clarke's and Hyams' correspondence during the pre-production stages, and is mainly of interest for revealing that Clarke was one of the first people to freak out over the possibilities of an e-mail account.) He was knighted in 2000.

Caught in the Net: The Pitiful History of the Internet Thriller

Phil Nugent — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Steve Johnson contemplates the ongoing disappointment that is the Internet thriller. It's not as if Hollywood has ever trusted computers any farther than they could throw them. HAL 9000 tried to hog the spacecraft for himself in 2001: Space Odyssey; in Colossus: The Forbin Project, an electronic super-brain invented by the guy who plays Victor on my grandmother's beloved The Young and the Restless, was designed to serve as a perfect missile defense system but immediately started acting too big for its business; its descendant, the computer in WarGames almost started World War III in an excess of playfulness; and don't get me started on that weekend at Westworld. (Hell, I had more fun at Euro Disney.) But for the better part of a decade now, Hollywood has been specifically trying to tap into the supposedly vast, ominous potential of the Internet and hook into some of those cool cyberpunk dollars, with decidedly mixed results. "Like a virus shrugging off an outdated antibiotic," Johnson writes, "the Net has proved resistant to such attempts. You've seen evidence of the struggle. Over and over, Hollywood has shown us things happening on computer monitors in improbably large and cartoonish letters, as if all Web sites dealing with national security are designed by the folks at Webkinz. 'To eliminate Baltimore, click here,' that kind of thing."

You can see the thinking. Someone with mad hacking skills could spy on you, erase your identity, fill your Netflix queue with Ed Burns movies, make your life hell itself. That line of thinking helped produce such early cyberduds as The Net, in which hackers laid siege to Sandra Bullock while the audience just sat there wondering why she was so hard up for company that she was hanging out with Dennis Miller. Then there was Hackers starring Jonny Lee Miller and an alarmingly hot young Angelina Jolie (sporting an English accent and cobalt-blue nail polish) as the leaders of a team of master web surfers who run afoul of an evil computer genius called The Plague (Fisher Stevens), who single-handedly caused the cancellation of our plans to compose a list of the Ten Lamest Movie Super-Villains because the computer that writes our Top Ten lists kept insisting on assigning his name to all ten slots. (The most convincing hackers in movies are the team of government-run nerds in Enemy of the State--Jack Black is among them--who act like big swinging dicks when they're alone in a dark room with their computer screens in front of them and who fold faster than Superman on laundry day when pulled into the light and asked to account for what they've been doing--just following orders, natch.) More recently, as in Untraceable, movies have tried to go the Lee Siegel route of suggesting that there's just something about the 'Net that short circuits the frontal lobes and renders people incapable of fighting off their baser instincts. Here, the villain is a serial killer who yokes his victims to a webcam and urges people to check in at his site, "killwithme," having made it clear that "the more that watch, the faster he dies." Naturally, people watch in droves. (The set-up faintly recalls The Card Player, a 2002 Dario Argento horror in which the serial killer bets the victim's life on a video card game with the cops; if the killer wins, he executes his latest captive in front of a webcam while the police watch on helplessly.)

There are real anxieties and fears involving the Internet just waiting to be tapped for the movies, but there's a built-in problem identified by the writer Scott Rosenberg: "Movies are overwhelmingly a visual medium, and dealing with the Internet is the parallel problem to dealing with writing. In the old days it was a typewriter. There aren't a lot of great movies about someone sitting at a typewriter." The great Internet paranoia fantasy of the movies may still be the original The Matrix, which shot right past the realistic image of someone tapping away at a keyboard and conjured up an impressively imagined world of thrilling liberation and terrifying imprisonment. It understood that what's exciting, and scary, about the Internet is the sense it can give you that you're exploring strange new worlds at the same time that you are, in actual fact, sitting on your ass typing. The Matrix somehow found a way to show what that fantasy neverland located somewhere between the keyboard and the brain might look like, while other attempts to visualize the experience, such as Johnny Mnemonic, became too literal-minded and hit the earth with a splat. And having gotten it right that first time, the Wachowskis then spent a lot of time and money proving just how hard it is to do. As a wise man once said: "Whoa."