The Screengrab : Turn the River

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like To See (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

WHIT STILLMAN (& CHRIS EIGEMAN)

Like caviar or triple-malt scotch, the films of Whit Stillman are rarified, WASPy treats best savored while the rest of the world noshes on Big Macs and beer. Around the time Richard Linklater was eavesdropping on his beloved Austin eccentrics in Slacker and Kevin Smith was chronicling the lives of hyper-articulate, dirty-minded New Jersey wage slaves in Clerks, Stillman’s indie debut, Metropolitan, focused on yet another chatty, self-contained subculture: the privileged debutantes and awkward urban haute bourgeoisie of the Upper East Side twentysomething social circuit. Dry, sardonic Chris Eigeman and nervous, schleppy Taylor Nichols were Metropolitan’s standouts, and Stillman wisely paired the sweet-and-sour comic duo as brothers in his follow-up, Barcelona, a witty, extremely low-concept picaresque about boorish Americans abroad in 1980s Spain. Eigeman also starred in The Last Days of Disco, the final installment of the director’s overeducated white people trilogy (and also his last film to date). For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, given its thematic and tonal similarity to its predecessors, Disco (which also features Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard) was considered a disappointment by most fans and critics (if not by Stillman himself, who enjoyed the tale of bed and club-hopping yuppies enough to retell the story again a few years later as a fake roman-a-clef in the voice of one of the film’s characters). Sadly, Stillman’s vision was too wordy, insular and quirky even for art house audiences, making it impossible in recent years for him to finance subsequent projects, the worst result of which (to my way of thinking) is the resultant lack of good roles for the hilarious (and criminally underused) Eigeman. Yet the Internet Movie Database says that Stillman is currently adapting Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and though no cast is listed yet, with luck maybe it’s a good sign that Eigeman (recently Spirit Award-nominated for his directorial debut, Turn the River) will someday appear in front of the camera again and not just behind it.

BROOKE ADAMS

In the late '70s and early '80s, Adams' dark-haired beauty, sense of fun, and tantalizing hint of neurosis (in such films as Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Tell Me a Riddle, The Dead Zone, and Almost You) made her the thinking horndog's indie movie star of choice, but then she drifted out of sight. She only turned up in movies a couple of times during the '90s, most notably in Alison Anders's 1992 Gas Food Lodging. That same year, she married Tony Shalhoub, with whom she had a daughter the next year. In 2002, she had her only big movie role of recent years in Made-Up, a charming but barely seen comedy that Shalhoub co-starred in and directed, from a script by her sister, Lynne Adams. About the only other way to have gazed on her in recent years would be to monitor Shalhoub's TV series; she's made guest appearances on both Wings and Monk. So long as they're happy, I'm happy. I miss her, though.

MARE WINNINGHAM

In 1985, Winningham co-starred in the prototypical Brat Pack movie St. Elmo's Fire, when she was 26. Dramatically, she was at a disadvantage for being cast as the least emotional, mildest mannered of the seven lead characters, though she also had an edge in that she was the only one of the movie's stars, besides Ally Sheedy, who could act a lick. (At the time, anyway: Rob Lowe had his moments fifteen years later on The West Wing.) Winningham has the kind of virtues that can easily be cast as negatives, but she's such a capable, talented actress that her honesty and decency can seem radiant and illuminating rather than starchy and prim; to fully appreciate her, check out the 1995 Georgia, where her superb performance as a hard-working, mess-cleaning musician can be viewed aside Jennifer Jason Leigh's gruesomely self-immolating, exhibitionistic display as her self-immolating sister. The worst thing that could ever be said of Winningham is that her honorable acting style has sometimes failed to make the dull, underwritten roles she's been stuck with seem livelier than they are, but anyone who saw her as the unconventional love of Anthony Edwards' life in Miracle Mile (1989) or the blubbering girlfriend who's quick to dump the jobless Timothy Hutton in Made in Heaven (1987) knows that her gifts include a wild streak. As she enters her middle years -- she turns fifty next year -- it sure would be something to get to see the nice girl be given the chance to cut the hell loose.

PAMELA REED

It's easy to imagine aspiring directors in Hollywood being sent forth into the valley armed with one basic, flawless piece of no-brainer advice: if you have a scene that you want the audience to stay awake for, stick Pamela Reed onscreen. Since 1980, her first year in movies, inviting David Carradine and Sonny Landham to have a knife fight for her honor (Carradine: "What does the winner get?" Reed: "Nothin' you ain't both already had.") in The Long Riders and presenting Paul La Mat with a marriage proposal that should have come with a free toaster in Melvin and Howard, she's been practically storming off the screen and slapping the cell phones out of people's hands. Why has this woman never been offered the chance to carry a movie? Is it thought that a woman with her energy and internal strength would alienate audiences if they had to put up with her for more than a few scenes at a time? Sure, that makes sense: it's not as if Bette Davis had a career. But I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be grateful for what we get of her, especially given that she's spent most of the past decade hanging around TV sets. This did give her the chance to revive one of her greatest roles, the fully caffeinated political campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh of Robert Alman's Tanner '88 and its 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. On the other hand, that Jericho thing didn't do anybody any good. She belongs on the big screen, where she can take on dragons big enough to make it seem like a fair fight (as does her co-star from Tanner and The Right Stuff, Veronica Cartwright, and Amy Madigan, another actress who doesn't need to chug kerosene before she arrives on the set to breathe fire).

PIPER PERABO

Can it really be called a comeback if a star never quite hit it big in the first place? Consider the sad case of Piper Perabo. In 2000, she was being called Hollywood's It Girl, with two high-profile projects on the horizon. Unfortunately for her, those projects were The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Coyote Ugly. The former was a notorious stinker in which Perabo's performance got lost amid the second-rate animation and hammy turns from Robert DeNiro and Rene Russo. The latter was a modest success, but one that had less to do with its nominal lead than audiences flocking to see scantily-clad dancing female bartenders. Having gained no momentum whatsoever from her alleged star-making vehicles, Perabo's career quickly hit the skids, with the actress appearing in a string of lame-brained thrillers and forgettable comedies, with the occasional supporting role in the Steve Martin-headed Cheaper By the Dozen franchise. Eight years after being declared the Next Big Thing, Perabo was last seen playing second banana to a cast of talking Chihuahuas. Frankly, that's a shame, because despite the disappointing trajectory of her career, Perabo remains a vibrant, fetching actress with an infectious smile and a surprisingly soulful side. Just look at her brief appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige -- as Hugh Jackman's ill-fated lover, Perabo brings more genuine spark and feeling to her role than her more tabloid-friendly costar Scarlett Johansson could hope to muster. Even better is 2001's Lost and Delirious, a mostly forgotten Canadian film about teenage sexuality in an ivy-covered boarding school. Perabo steals the show as Paulie, a rebellious young woman nursing a hopeless love for her reluctant classmate. It's a performance that's so white-hot with intensity and charged with eroticism that she eventually becomes more than the film can really take. So why exactly was she last seen in a movie that called for her to bark into a telephone? Your guess is as good as ours.

Click Here For Part One, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

2008 Gotham Awards & 2009 Spirit Nominations Announced

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Yes, it's that magical time of year again: Oscar pre-season. True, we've still got a few more weeks of 2008 releases to go (including the obligatory one-week L.A. runs for last minute Academy Awards consideration), but in the same way baseball fans start frothing at the mouth in anticipation when the equipment trucks roll down to Florida for Spring Training, so, too, do the red carpet geeks amongst us jump for joy at the first sign of envelopes opening.

And, indeed, last night in New York City, the Independent Feature Project rolled out their annual Gotham Awards ceremomy, paying tribute to director Courtney Hunt's Frozen River as Best Feature, with Lance Hammer winning the Best Breakthrough Director Award for his film Ballast. Best Documentary went to Trouble the Water (directed by Tia Lessin & Carl Deal), while the Best Ensemble Performance Award went to both the casts of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Synecdoche, New York (which blew my mind by having Samantha Morton and Emily Watson play the same character, thus further diminishing my already shaky capacity for telling the actresses apart). Rounding out the Gothams was the Breakthrough Actor Award, which went to Melissa Leo for her performance in Frozen River, and Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You, taken by Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues.

But, even better, Oscar's laid-back, pot-smoking kid sister, the Spirit Awards, announced nominations for the ceremony that will take place live on the IFC Channel at 5PM EST on February 21st, 2009 (and will hopefully not have Rainn Wilson as host again). Mmm...plaudits!

THE 2009 SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS

Best Feature

"Ballast"
Producers: Lance Hammer, Nina Parikh
"Frozen River"
Producers: Chip Hourihan, Heather Rae

"Rachel Getting Married"
Producers: Neda Armian, Jonathan Demme, Marc Platt

"Wendy and Lucy"
Producers: Larry Fessenden, Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani

"The Wrestler"
Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Scott Franklin

Best Director

Ramin Bahrani, "Chop Shop"
Jonathan Demme, "Rachel Getting Married"

Lance Hammer, "Ballast"

Courtney Hunt, "Frozen River"

Thomas McCarthy, "The Visitor"

Best First Feature

"Afterschool"
Director: Antonio Campos
Producers: Sean Durkin, Josh Mond
"Medicine for Melancholy"
Director: Barry Jenkins
Producer: Justin Barber

"Sangre de Mi Sangre"
Director: Christopher Zalla
Producers: Per Melita, Benjamin Odell

"Sleep Dealer"
Director: Alex Rivera
Producer: Anthony Bregman

"Synecdoche, New York"
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Producers: Anthony Bregman, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sidney Kimmel

John Cassavetes Award (Given to the best feature made for under $500,000)

"In Search of a Midnight Kiss"
Writer/Director: Alex Holdridge
Producers: Seth Caplan and Scoot McNairy
"Prince of Broadway"
Director: Sean Baker
Writers: Sean Baker, Darren Dean
Producer: Darren Dean

"The Signal"
Writer/Directors: David Bruckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry
Producers: Jacob Gentry and Alexander Motiagh

"Take Out"
Writer/Directors/Producers: Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou

"Turn the River"
Writer/Director: Chris Eigeman
Producer: Ami Armstrong

Best First Screenplay

Dustin Lance Black, "Milk"
Lance Hammer, "Ballast"

Courtney Hunt, "Frozen River"

Jonathan Levine, "The Wackness"

Jenny Lumet, "Rachel Getting Married"

Best Screenplay

Woody Allen, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, "Sugar"

Charlie Kaufman, "Synecdoche, New York"

Howard A. Rodman, "Savage Grace"

Christopher Zalla, "Sangre de Mi Sangre"

Best Female Lead

Summer Bishil, "Towelhead"
Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"

Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"

Tarra Riggs, "Ballast"

Michelle Williams, "Wendy and Lucy"

Best Male Lead

Javier Bardem, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor"

Sean Penn, "Milk"

Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker"

Mickey Rourke, "The Wrestler"

Best Supporting Female

Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Rosemarie DeWitt, "Rachel Getting Married"

Rosie Perez, "The Take"

Misty Upham, "Frozen River"

Debra Winger, "Rachel Getting Married"

Best Supporting Male

James Franco, "Milk"
Anthony Mackie, "The Hurt Locker"

Charlie McDermott, "Frozen River"

JimMyron Ross, "Ballast"

Haaz Sleiman, "The Visitor"

Best Cinematography

Maryse Alberti, "The Wrestler"
Lol Crowley, "Ballast"

James Laxton, "Medicine for Melancholy"

Harris Savides, "Milk"

Michael Simmonds, "Chop Shop"

Best Documentary

"The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)"
Director: Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath
"Encounters at the End of the World"
Director: Werner Herzog

"Man on Wire"
Director: James Marsh

"The Order of Myths"
Director: Margaret Brown

"Up the Yangtze"
Director: Yang Chung

Best Foreign Film

"The Class" (France)
Director: Laurent Cantet
"Gomorrah" (Italy)
Director: Matteo Garrone

"Hunger" (UK/Ireland)
Director: Steve McQueen

"Secret of the Grain" (France)
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche

"Silent Light" (Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany)
Director: Carlos Reygadas

Robert Altman Award (Given to one film's director, casting director and ensemble cast)

"Synecdoche, New York"
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Casting Director: Jeanne McCarthy
Ensemble Cast: Hope Davis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Tom Noonan, Dianne Wiest, Michelle Williams

Someone to Watch Award

Barry Jenkins, "Medicine for Melancholy"
Nina Paley, "Sita Sings the Blues"

Lynn Shelton, "My Effortless Brilliance"

Truer Than Fiction Award

Margaret Brown, "The Order of Myths"
Sacha Gervasi, "Anvil! The Story of Anvil"

Darius Marder, "Loot"

Producers Award

Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy, "Treeless Mountain" and "I'll Come Running"
Jason Orans, "Goodbye Solo" and "Year of the Fish"

Heather Rae, "Frozen River" and "Ibid"

DVD Digest for July 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, Criterion gives DVD buyers a re-pressing of an old favorite and a new version of a classic. Also, plenty of Blu-Ray for your enjoyment, provided you’re not in the market for good movies.

DVD of the Week: Years ago, Criterion released four of Carl Th. Dreyer’s greatest films in deluxe versions, but his 1932 classic Vampyr has only been available in a subpar transfer from Image. Until now, that is. This week, Vampyr finally gets the treatment it richly deserves in a new two-disc set from the folks at Criterion. Along with both German- and English-credited versions of the film, the DVD contains a commentary from film scholar Tony Rayns, a 1966 documentary about Dreyer’s work, a radio broadcast of Dreyer speaking about filmmaking, and much more. Even the insert is indispensible, containing not only essays on the film, but a book featuring the film’s original screenplay as well as the story on which it was based. Naturally, any DVD version of a Dreyer film is a must for any serious film lover, but to see one of his most significant works given the top-shelf treatment like this is magnificent news.

Also this week, Criterion is re-releasing Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low in a new version featuring several new features, plus a new high-definition transfer. So if you didn’t pick up the film last time around, now’s your chance.

In a slow week for new movies coming to DVD, today brings the release of the college-students-taking-on-Vegas thriller 21 (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Famke Janssen in Turn the River (Universal), and the John C. Reilly/Seann William Scott comedy The Promotion (Weinstein).

On the TV-on-DVD front, the big news this week is the long-awaited Region 1 release of Spaced: The Complete Series (Warner). Fans of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz will finally be able to get a taste of the series that introduced to the world the stars (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost) and director (Edgar Wright) of those films, along with the witty, pop-culture-savvy brand of humor that made those movies fanboy favorites. Also this week: Las Vegas Season 5 (Universal).

Finally, coming this week to Blu-Ray only: the Sony horror trifecta of I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and Urban Legend; Universal’s Mummy trilogy of The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and The Scorpion King; and The Perfect Storm (Warner). And if you’re actually waiting for good movies to come out on Blu-Ray, take heart- October is only three months away.

2008: Second Quarter Wrap-Up

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

So, by the end of First Quarter 2008, I'd seen a lot of mediocrity and just one truly memorable movie (Full Battle Rattle), but I'm happy to report there's been a sharp uptick in the bottom line of my filmgoing enjoyment in the Second Quarter of the year, with an additional five flicks now vying for year-end Top Ten consideration.

Leading the pack by several furlongs is Young@Heart, an emotional loop-de-loop coaster about a chorus of feisty oldsters from Northampton, Massachusetts who tour the world delighting audiences with age-inappropriate selections like the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" and Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia." Old people singing rock songs is a funny concept (and the choristers are a delight), but as the movie goes along and mortality slowly eats away at the group, you come to appreciate the simple heroism of the people on screen, singing in the face of death as they squeeze every last drop of life from their remaining time on Earth. In general, I try not to judge people too harshly based on their personal tastes when it comes to movies, figuring everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but if you don’t get choked up at least once during Young@Heart (the tough young prisoners moved to tears by one jailhouse concert? the gut-wrenching performance of Coldplay’s “Fix You” punctuated by the rasp and click of the soloist’s respirator?) then I’m afraid it’s very possible you simply have no soul.

Less moving but a helluva lot more fun was Iron Man, that rarest of Hollywood beasts: a tent-pole summer blockbuster where the director (Jon Favreau) actually seemed to care about the script and performances more than the promotional tie-ins and CGI. Robert Downey, Jr. was always an actor more famous for his wasted potential than his screen performances, but now in his clean and sober middle age, he’s finally developed into the edgy, funny leading man he’d always threatened to be (plus Jeff Bridges + shaved head = awesome).

Other would-be and actual blockbusters I’ve seen thus far in Spring/Summer ‘08 were fair to middling (Prince Caspian, Sex & The City, Indiana Jones and the Embarrassingly Fake-Looking Monkeys), so the rest of my current Top Ten contenders have been either festival fare (The Wackness and Turn the River, reviewed in earlier posts) or lingered around the local art house long enough for me to finally catch up with them, as was the case with the great, greatly underrated gangster flick In Bruges, starring an incredibly likeable, charismatic actor I’ve never seen before named Colin Farrell (who has the misfortune of sharing a name and face with that obnoxious, sulky “bad boy” from S.W.A.T. and Miami Vice).

As for Third Quarter prospects, I have seven words for you: Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Related stories: 2008: First Quarter Wrap-Up, SXSW Review: Full Battle Rattle, Boston Independent Film Festival Review: Turn the River, Provincetown Film Festival Review: The Wackness

Independent Film Festival of Boston Review: Turn the River

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Gambling movies, like submarine movies, generally don’t have too many variables. At some point in just about every sub movie, the submarine gets torpedoed and/or sinks to “crush depth,” and the captain and crew either get killed or, more often, survive. Likewise, in cards and billiards movies (not to mention sports films in general, of which gambling flicks are a boozier subset), the plot typically comes down to: in the big, climactic competition, does your rooting interest win or lose? And in most stories, the outcome, while faux suspenseful, is usually pretty easy to predict.

So it’s one of the strengths of indie staple Chris Eigeman’s writing and directing debut Turn the River, about Famke Janssen’s desperate, homeless, pool-hustling card sharp, that not only is the outcome of her particular “big game,” when it comes, anything but a foregone conclusion, but also that her ultimate success or failure in the contest is only one element in a suspenseful skein of fateful plot developments.

Eigeman, best known for mordant, fast-talking characters in films like Kicking & Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, the short-lived West Coast Seinfeld knock-off It’s Like, You Know and the Whit Stillman trilogy (Metropolitan, Barcelona & The Last Days of Disco), does a good job capturing both the quiet hostility of upper class dysfunction and the bare-knuckle grit of back-room cash games in this tightly-controlled, low-budget indie about a mother (Janssen) struggling to raise the money necessary to kidnap her son (Jaymie Dornan) over the border to Canada, away from his abusive yuppie father (Matt Ross, the scary polygamist Alby on Big Love).

Janssen goes “all in” (get it?) with her portrayal of the mother, Kailey, an older, sadder variant of the shady poker pro she portrayed in Rounders. Despite stringy hair and a drab wardrobe, the actress’ supermodel looks clash a bit with River's seedy milieu, but the character’s she-wolf intensity is nevertheless compelling.

According to Eigman, his star went to billiards boot camp before shooting began, and managed to nail one crucial, difficult bank shot in the movie on her very first try (scoring a nice payday for some lucky P.A. in the on-set betting pool who correctly predicted she’d manage the feat in one take). Janssen’s unfaked ease with a cue stick lends credence to the storyline, as does her palpable chemistry with Dornan, utterly believable as a smart, resourceful kid with none of the usual cloying Hollywood precociousness.

The rest of the supporting cast is equally fine: Ross is a hissable but multi-faceted villain, Lois Smith is a hoot as a bitch-on-wheels matriarch, John Juback is a formidable pool-hall adversary and Terry Kinney steals his scenes as a sweet, street-smart black marketeer. And for those disheartened by Rip Torn’s recent frail, half-speed performances on 30 Rock, his turn here as Janssen’s grizzly mentor, Quinn, is a gruff, vigorous return to form.