The Screengrab : batman

The Last Morning Deal Report

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

A word of warning: just because this is our last Morning Deal Report at the Screengrab doesn’t mean Hollywood is going to stop announcing ridiculous projects. You’ll just have to find out about them somewhere else. I wish I could say we’ve saved the best for last, but we can only work with what they give us.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz will reunite for James Mangold’s Wichita. It is not the story of a lineman who’s still on the line. “The script has been through many machinations, but the most recent drafts were done by Scott Frank, with Mangold currently fine-tuning the script with Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island). Two-hander has several action scenes. Cruise will play a secret agent who pops in and out of the life of a single woman,” Variety reports.

Kevin Smith has found another pair of dicks. “Seann William Scott and Adam Brody are joining Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Warner Bros.' A Couple of Dicks,” Smith’s new buddy action comedy, per The Hollywood Reporter. Smith did not write the script, which is by script Robb and Mark Cullen, and “follows a maverick cop (Willis) and his partner (Morgan) who, while tracking a valuable stolen baseball card, tangle with a memorabilia-obsessed gangster and rescue a Mexican beauty who holds the key to millions in laundered drug money.”

Also, there will be another Batman movie, another Star Trek, another James Bond, and at some point, probably another King Kong remake. Save us the aisle seat!

DVD Digest for May 19, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the same old stuff you always get from DVD Digest. Also, a new Steven Seagal movie!

For some people reading this column, the news that the recent releases Valkyrie (MGM, also Blu-Ray), Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and My Bloody Valentine 3D (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) will be more important than anything else. But we’re looking out for the rest of you as well. And if none of these titles quicken your pulse- and I perfectly understand if they don’t- there’s always the latest from movie-star-turned-musician-turned-energy-drink-magnate (take that, Billy Bob Thornton!) Steven Seagal, Driven to Kill (Fox, also Blu-Ray). On the other side of things, the artsy and fartsy out there should be salivating over the release of John Gianvito’s excellent Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (E1 Entertainment). In other words, something for everybody!

And what would a DVD Digest be without the classics section, for those of you who aren’t all uptight about black-and-white, subtitles, Academy ratio, and long-dead movie stars. Devotees of the Criterion Collection no doubt already know about the dynamic duo of DVDs hitting streets today. First, Peter Yates' great Boston crime drama The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Criterion) makes its long-awaited DVD debut. Or if you’re in the mood for something more, uh, Eastern, check out Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura (Criterion)- includes The Insect Woman, Pigs and Battleships, Intentions of Murder. Fans of old Hollywood would be advised to pick up two John Wayne favorites, El Dorado Centennial Edition (Paramount) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Centennial Edition (Paramount). And by some happy coincidence, today’s release of Fritz Lang’s Nazi-hunting thriller Man Hunt (Fox) is timed perfectly with the release of the aforementioned Valkyrie. Funny how that worked out, dontcha find?

Fans of TV on DVD should find something to enjoy among this week’s releases, which include the ever-popular 24 Season 7 (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Alan Ball’s vampire saga True Blood (HBO, also Blu-Ray), and the no-longer-surprising-in-its-awesomeness Friday Night Lights Season 3 (Universal).

Finally, if you’ve a Blu-Ray player, you’re in luck! Today’s a big one for Blu-Ray only releases, highlighted by the Batman 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray Book (Warner), which includes a Batmobile full of extras, documentaries, and other cool stuff. For the kids, A Bug’s Life (Disney) hits stores to capitalize on the upcoming Pixar release Up, while those who are looking forward to the latest Terminator blockbuster will no doubt pick up Terminator 2 Skynet Edition (Lionsgate). The political drama Lions for Lambs (Fox) is coming out for fans of political speechifying. Finally, Paramount’s got a whole slew of new Blu-Ray only releases hitting stores today, including Three Days of the Condor, Changing Lanes, Enemy at the Gates, Paycheck, and The Machinist.

In Other Blogs: Date Rape and the Full Douchiness

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:30:00 GMT

The great date rape debate over Observe and Report rages on. Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule weighs in. “As I have stated here more than often, the subject of rape is one that I don’t take particularly lightly, so I stands to reason that if the scene were something on the order of revolting exploitation in simple service of pushing the comedy envelope, my moral compass not yet having been totally demagnetized, it would not be a scene which would naturally cause me to leap to its defense. The scene is, in fact, a twisted riff on DeNiro’s delusional date with Cybill Shepherd, in which he takes her to a porn movie and she runs out on him, disgusted. The difference is, of course, that Faris’ character not only doesn’t run out, but actively encourages this oafish psychosexual time bomb in his increasingly dangerous delusions largely because her own moral compass, aided by drink and drugs, is carelessly spinning out of control. Jody Hill’s satiric portrait of the deadened denizens of mall culture, of which Faris’ Brandi and Rogen’s Ronnie are but two extreme examples, have been called heartless exaggerations, but to this hayseed they looked pretty familiar.”

Spoutblog has the scoop on the relaunched Movieline. “The switch was flipped on the Movieline.com moments ago. The relaunch of the Hollywood magazine of the 90s, the once eminently readable forerunner of the bloggy listicle most notable in recent years for its spectacular decline into toothless aspirational lifestyle mag Hollywood Life, immediately caught blogosphere attention when three editors from the recently shuttered Defamer were hired to steer the reincarnation effort…The verdict as of Hour One? So far, they don’t *exactly* seem to be reinventing the movie website wheel but, you know … it’s not like I am.”

At The Projectionist, David Edelstein accuses Robert Downey, Jr. of The Full Douchiness. “Downey won an Oscar nomination thanks to his delivery of that ‘Full Retard’ speech — which wasn’t just funny but also fundamentally accurate in its assessment of actors' obsessions and the Academy's taste. Even given his sympathy for the subject of The Soloist and his co-star Jamie Foxx, Downey could have handled this with more grace: “Yeah, I knew that would come back to haunt me … that was that character's opinion. But Jamie got to know this guy and really wanted to do him justice and blah blah blah blah … ” Or something. Instead, he took umbrage; he was offended that a journalist would dare to bring up something he had uttered in a movie released less than a year ago. Downey is a great actor and deserves all kinds of respect for keeping his demons at bay, but there ought to be a rehab center for celebrity self-righteousness.” (Edelstein has since backed off a bit. The Partial Douchiness, perhaps?)

Buzz Buzz has developed a special feature that will aid my weekly efforts to assemble this here column. “A few years ago I put together a Google custom search engine called Film Blogs, Etc. that I remain quite pleased with, and that I use all the time. It includes a good mix of high-quality web-based publications that approach film from a variety of angles. A number of these sites cover new movies, often in the form of festival dispatches, making this a good resource for finding information about films that haven’t yet garnered enough reviews to appear on sites like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, and the online film journals and blogs by Film Studies academics that it includes make it a nice complement to scholarly databases like the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals and the Film Literature Index Online.” Nice job, but AHEM we don’t see the Screengrab on your list of searched blogs. Please rectify this injustice post-haste.

Finally, postmodernbarney.com offers some Uncomfortable Plot Summaries. “BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill…FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF: Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement…STAR TREK IV: Interplanetary fugitives poach wildlife from a past age to cover up an act of genocide.”

Unwatchable #38: “Chairman of the Board”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

The history of prop comics successfully making the transition to leading men of cinema is a short one. And when I say short, I actually mean nonexistent. If anyone was going to pull it off, you’d figure it would be Gallagher, or at least his evil brother Gallagher II. Neither Gallagher, however, even attempted a run at stardom on the silver screen. As for other prop comics…well, it’s hard to think of any. Wikipedia claims Rip Taylor counts, even though his only prop of note is his ubiquitous bag of confetti. They also include Harpo Marx on their roster of prop comics, which may technically be true, but let’s get real. The hall of prop comic fame basically boils down to Gallagher, who never starred in a movie, and Carrot Top, who starred in one. This is that movie.

The Carrot Top of 1998’s Chairman of the Board is not the steroidal, absurdly over-muscled alien of today – and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, get a load of this…this…thing:

Sorry I had to do that to you, but Jesus! What the hell is wrong with some people? It’s not that Mr. Top was any prize in his scrawny Chairman of the Board incarnation – he’s still got the fishy face and frizzy orange mane – but at least he didn’t look like he was auditioning for the lead role in RoboClown. The task for director Alex Zamm (The Pooch and the Pauper, straight-to-DVD sequels to Inspector Gadget and Dr. Dolittle) and his team of writers was a daunting one: build a movie around this goofball. They took the path of least resistance, casting the Carrot as an inventor named Edison – a zany inventor of items (ketchup gun, anatomically correct fanny pack) that wouldn’t look out of place in a prop comic’s supply trunk – and surrounding him with a Pee-Wee’s Beach House production design. Edison is a Venice Beach surfer dude whose notebook full of inspiration has yet to yield a profitable idea. One afternoon he has a chat with wealthy executive Armand McMillan (Jack Warden), a fellow surfer and dreamer. When Armand kicks the bucket shortly thereafter, Edison is stunned to learn he’s inherited the multi-million dollar McMillan corporation – although not as stunned as Armand’s son Bradford (Larry Miller), who had planned on assuming the mantle of…chairman of the board.

While Bradford schemes to regain control of the company, Edison becomes the toast of the boardroom by averting a worker’s strike and concocting a best-selling line of TV dinners with actual miniature televisions included in the trays. He also woos executive Natalie Stockwell, played by the lovely Courtney Thorne-Smith, who must be one hell of a good sport. As if it’s not bad enough she’s spent the past eight years cuddling up to Jim Belushi in the quintessential “fat guy with hot wife” sitcom According to Jim, she’s also smooched the rubbery lips of Carrot Top.

If not for its star, Chairman of the Board would merely be a witless, infantile comedy devoid of laughs, but there is some fun to be had in trying to read the body language of his co-stars as they are forced to interact with this shrill, hyper freak. Larry Miller in particular seems to retreat to a safe place in his mind every time Carrot Top gets near him (perhaps the place where he cashes his paychecks). As it turns out, Chairman of the Board was both the first and last starring vehicle for Mr. Top, but when they start casting the villains for the next Batman movie, I’d advise him to send in a headshot.

Previously on Unwatchable:
39. The Invisible Maniac
40. Son of the Mask
41. Troll 2
42. Zombie Nightmare
43. American Ninja V

Beatty vs. Tribune Syndicate: The Battle Over Dick Tracy

Phil Nugent — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Warren Beatty is being sued over the rights to Dick Tracy, the square-jawed supercop who was created by cartoonist Chester Gould in 1931. Beatty, who bought the rights to the character in 1985, has had some kind of Tracy obsession for much of his career; he used to talk about his lust to don the detective's yellow hat and two-way wrist radio in interviews going back to the 1960s, when talk of a movie based on a comic strip automatically inspired talk about Pop Art and the kind of jolly, mass-market camp typified by the Adam West Batman TV show. When Beatty finally got around to making 1990's Dick Tracy, the film was released in the shadow of Tim Burton's Batman, and Beatty, said by some to be nervous that he was no longer a box office draw for young audiences, consented to a publicity campaign geared around Madonna's role as a singing femme fatale. (In addition to starring as Tracy, Beatty both directed and produced that movie.) In recent years, Beatty has been heard to kick around the idea of doing Dick Tracy II or maybe a TV special, and in 2006 he took Tribune Media Services, which syndicates the comic strip, to court to establish that he still has the rights to the strip. The latest developments stem from Tribune's charges that if Beatty wants to grind out a TV show for no reason except to extend his claim to the rights to the character. The rights may revert to Tribune if the court decides that Beatty has let ten years lapse without making any "productive use" of them.

Gould, who retired from the strip in 1977 (it would be kept alive by other hands) and who died in 1985, apparently not upon hearing that his creation had fallen into the hands of Warren Beatty, created a distinctively flinty world, characterized by what the comics critic R. Fiore called an "unforgiving Calvinism", in which the grimly moralistic Tracy did whatever it took to bring a semblance of order to an urban landscape populated by dupes, saps, and brutish monsters whose misshapen souls had turned their features into Halloween masks. Such characters as the hit man Flattop Jones and the Nazi agent Pruneface might have taken their cues from Richard III's opening soliloquy: "Cheated of feature by dissembling nature/ Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time/ Into this breathing world, scarce half made up/ And that so lamely and unfashionable/ That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.../And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover/ To entertain these fair well-spoken days/ I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days." (The Screengrab: your one-stop on-line shop for comics rants and Shakespeare quotes.)

So far, no screen adaptation of the strip has really tapped into the fevered, hard-boiled nightmare quality of Gould's best early work, which after a long stretch out of print has recently begun reappearing in a series of hardcover volumes from IDW Publishing, beginning in 2006. (Volume 7, with Flattop on the cover, arrives late next month.) Republic Pictures, and later RKO, produced a string of Dick Tracy movies in the 1930s, most of which starred the colorless Ralph Byrd; in the 1960s, UPA produced a series of five-minute cartoons with Everett Sloane providing the voice of Tracy. These are best remembered for the supporting cast, a veritable United Nations of offensive ethnic stereotypes that included such worthies as Go-Go Gomez and Joe Jitsu. (These characters were voiced by Mel Blanc. I'd like to believe that he was high on something at the time.) The question of who may get to take the next crack at getting it right has recently taken on new significance with the bankruptcy of TMS's parent company, the Tribune Company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection late last year, while struggling under a debt load of some $13 billion. Having exclusive rights to Tracy again would be a major asset for a company that can't afford to be picky about where its next meal is coming from.

DVD Digest for March 10, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a handful of the most acclaimed films of 2008, and an animated classic gets released from the Disney vaults again.

This week’s selection of recent releases coming to DVD includes some of 2008’s best-reviewed films, including Sean Penn giving an Oscar-winning performance in Gus Van Sant’s Milk (Universal, also Blu-Ray), Anne Hathaway in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (Sony, also Blu-Ray) [the best film of the year, says I], Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (Disney), and the Swedish vampire chiller Let the Right One In (Magnolia). Also this week, Jason Statham in Transporter 3 (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), the real-life blues story Cadillac Records (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott in Role Models (Universal, also Blu-Ray), Charlize Theron in the WTO-centric ensemble piece Battle in Seattle (Universal, also Blu-Ray), and finally, one of the worst-received films of 2008, Mark Herman’s Holocaust-themed family movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Disney).

The big news in classic releases this week is the 70th Anniversary “Platinum Edition” of one of Disney’s greatest animated classics, Pinocchio. Also coming to Blu-Ray, the new DVD includes new commentary from Leonard Maltin and others, some newly-unearthed deleted scenes and storyboards, and a bunch of new features for kids and animation buffs alike. Also this week: Richard Gere and Edward Norton in Primal Fear Special Edition (Paramount, also Blu-Ray), and perhaps the least likely “classic” I’ve spotlighted to date, Howard the Duck Special Edition (Universal).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings South Park Season 12 (Paramount, also Blu-Ray) and The Starter Wife Season 1 (Universal).

Finally, the biggest Blu-Ray only release this week is Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner), which is great news if you don’t mind paying for two DVDs you’ll probably never watch just so you get DVDs of the Burton Batman movies. Also, where’s Mask of the Phantasm?

The Screengrab Library of Unfilmed Screenplays: Sam Hamm's "Watchmen"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

[If there's one subject that holds more fascination for film geeks than the movies they've seen or are planning to see, it may be the movies that have not been made and may never will be: the scripts that go into permanent turnaround or excite some interest, only to be abandoned. A few of these attain the status of legends, a process that in the last several years has been exacerbated by the ability to disseminate them through the Internet. Because a screenplay is a physical object but also a blueprint for something fuller and richer, which would probably end up deviating from the script at any number of key points, reviewing unfilmed scripts is a movie critic's form of cryptozoology, kind of like examining a muddy footprint and trying to sketch Bigfoot from it. This week, to kick off our new series dedicated to the unicorns, mermaids, and moderate Republicans of the movie world, the Screengrab looks back at the "Watchmen"-the-movie that might have been.]

When Warner Bros. which owns DC Comics, started looking for someone to adapt its property Watchmen to the movies, it must have seemed a natural choice to call in Sam Hamm, who had written the script for the 1989 Batman, a movie that commercially kick-started the superhero-comic-book movie genre. Hamm's Batman script, which was rushed into production without benefit of the polishing it would have received had not the 1988 Writers' Guild strike intervened, is not without its problems, and if there's a comics convention going on near you, I can introduce you to several people who'd be overjoyed at the chance to list them for you. But it also has Hamm's freshly thought-out take on its hero, which laid the psychological foundation for Michael Keaton's performance and, to a great extent, much of the batlore that's come since.

As Hamm would later write, he considered young master Wayne's having elaborately built his life around the murder of his parents and concluded "that Bruce had become Batman as a result of being spoiled. He had grown up with sufficient money and leisure to luxuriate in his own tragedy, to wallow in the false sense that it made him somehow unique. In other words, Bruce had never learned to cut his losses. For good or bad, he'd become addicted to his own pain—and he relied on the outward nobility of his mission to conceal the true perversity of his addiction. In this psychological scheme the Batman persona would function both as a symptom of, and justification for, his madness. To keep it alive, he'd have to relive the death of his parents again and again, killing them anew each night." This sort of talk must have made it seem as if Hamm would be a natural soul mate to Alan Moore, who'd made his name in the American marketplace by applying his own nasty insight to such stock characters as Swamp Thing and the Joker. In fact, Hamm's earliest involvement in the project overlapped with the days when Moore and DC Comics were still on speaking terms, and after Hamm made a pilgrimage to Northampton to sup with Rorshach's creator, Moore declared that he had "complete faith" in him. What neither of them may have grasped is that, whatever Watchmen needed to successfully navigate its way to the big screen, a sharp reading of the motivations of a fifty-year-old pop myth was not among them. Long before Zack Snyder came calling, Watchmen had a reputation for being unfilmable, and watching Hamm try to wrestle it into shape points up some of the reasons for that.

[Please note: while it may seem odd to attach a spoiler's advisory to a discussion of a script that was never filmed, it is impossible to discuss the Watchmen that didn't get made without mentioning the details it shares, and deviates from, the movie that was finally made and the comic book it started out from. Consider yourself warned.]

Moore's Watchmen is set in a specific time and place--his fantasy of an America that is a very different place from the America of the 1980s because a repressive U.S. government has had access to a superpowered figure Dr. Manhattan, who was able to keep a lid on things and shut down the cultural and political explosions of the '60s and '70s. It is also a product and reflection of a specific time and place: America in the actual mid-1980s, when it was fashionable to sneer at those explosions and even to try to pretend they hadn't happened. It was also a time when nuclear jitters, exacerbated by the last tremors of the Cold War, seemed to color everything. The first thing anyone trying to adapt Watchmen has to figure out is, what time is it set in, and what version of that time? Hamm's script opens with an action sequence set during the 1976 Bicentennial celbrations. Some terrorists inside the Statue of Liberty have taken hostages and are threatening to kill them and blow up the monument. Riding to the rescue are our heroes, Nite Owl, Rorshach, the Comedian, Silk Spectre, and Adrian Veidt--Moore's Ozymandias, who in an ominous geature is called "Captain Metropolis" here--who have a contract with the government to fight crime and who are banded together under the group moniker "The Watchmen", a name that never actually appears in the comic book. The fact that our heroes actually fight under the handle in the script is our first strong indication that Hamm has a healthy willingness to make drastic changes in the source material to make it fit the new medium. It is also our first strong indication that he kind of doesn't get it.

In Moore's Watchmen, people have been running around in homemade costumes fighting crime since World War II; it's the accidental creation of the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan, whose powers are soon put to service rendering the U.S. government beyond question, that has rendered them obsolete. Hamm eliminates most of the alternative-historical background, so that here, it seems as if Dr. Manhattan's appearance might have inspired others to turn to free-lance heroism, a career option that is shut down after things go dreadfully wrong at the Statue of Liberty. (He also deploys the revelation that Richard Nixon is still president, which Moore announced at the outset of the comic to help set its tone, as a late-inning shockeroo.) Except for Dr, Manhattan's origin story and the revelation of what pushed Rorshach over the edge, Hamm dispenses with Moore's intricate flashback structure. The predecessor versions of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are gone, and after the murder that announces our jump to 1986, so is the Comedian; he's mentioned in passing a few times (never affectionately) but never seen again, and the news of his special connection to Silk Spectre never arrives. Hamm floorboards it to the end, which even die-hard fans of the comic have been known to concede has always been "problematic." In the original, Adrian Veidt obliterated part of Manhattan to scare the world powers into working together; in Hamm's rethinking, Veidt decides that in order to prevent an apocalyptic Cold War confrontation, he has to kill the indestructible Dr, Manhattan, a hat trick that involves producing some kind of time ripple through which he can prevent Dr. Manhattan from ever having existed, this negating the preceding couple of decades. When he succeeds, the central heroes find themselves deposited, in full costume, in the "real" New York of 1986.

Loopy as all this is--and it is sufficiently loopy to have guaranteed that any mention of the script garners howls of derision from fanboys coast to coast--it's worth keeping in mind just what Hamm was up against. The script, too, is a dated relic from a specific time and place: i.e., a Hollywood where comic book movies were now seen as potential cash cows but not prestige ventures, before Time magazine had included Watchmen on its list of the 100 best novels published since 1923. And the era in which the comic first appeared and the time in which Hamm was cobbling together his adaptation had been separated by its own time ripple: the cordial meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev had effectively killed the nuclear-clock atmosphere that the comic was a part of, even before the Berlin Wall came down. Hamm was taking an instant period piece and trying to find a way to keep it making sense, presumably with a contractually mandated running time of two hours or thereabouts.

In between the new opening and the changed ending, he serves up a sort of Cliff's Notes of the most excitingly filmable moments from the comic, and some of the new details he adds--such as the "Vietnam War Memorial" that resulted from Dr. Manhattan's quick winning of that war, a statue of the big blue bastard cradling a fallen soldier in his arms--catch the flavor of the comic to a T. He also performed a few cosmetic changes on such scenes as Rorshach's origin nightmare, concocting a gruesome new punishment for the masked vigilante to inflict on a child killer. (This was probably a necessary touch, since in a movie, it would be harder to ignore the fact that Moore had stolen the original scene wholesale from George Miller's Mad Max.) Less to his credit, Hamm also had Rorshach making Leno-worthy wisecracks about clogged toilets and street mimes. Even the scenes he retained and did justice to don't mean as much without the background Moore provided, especially since the connective tissue between them and Hamm's altered framework is thin and flimsy. But there's a bigger problem: the changes Hamm made conventionalize Watchmen. Terry Gilliam, who produced another draft with his co-writer Charles McKeown before concluding that there was no way to accommodate all the detail necessary to make a Watchmen movie that would be meaningful and comprehensible in the space of an acceptable running time, complained that Hamm's script just seemed like a bunch of superheroes running around, and he was not wrong.

The script for the current Watchmen movie is credited to David Hayter and Alex Tse. Tse is said to have worked from a pair of efforts Hayter wrote years ago, with an eye to eventually directing the movie himself. Hayter, too, had to grapple with the same road blocks as Hamm, the time period and the ending, and he apparently discarded the former only to have the current team bring it back. The new Watchmen was made according to rules that no one could have anticipated twenty years ago, namely a director with the inclination to make a film that would be as close a physical approximation of the comic book as possible (and the muscle, after the success of 300, to get the studio to go along with him), and a new entertainment business climate full of adults who grew up thinking of the comic as a masterpiece and who'd could envision an audience who'd want it treated not just respectfully but with slavish fan-worship. Confronting Nite Owl at the climax, Adrian Veidt accuses him of "a lack of vision", and that's the problem with any movie version of Watchmen whether the would-be adapter tinkers with the source material or solemnly traces over it. Whatever the billboards insist, it's a vision that somebody else already had, more than twenty years ago.

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It’s Watchmen Week here at The Screengrab as the greater Geek-iverse (and the studio executives who love it) await the opening of Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated, much low-expectations-generating adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ beloved, game-changing graphic novel about a bunch of asshole “super” “heroes” fighting crime, mental illness and erectile dysfunction in a scary alternate reality where Richard Nixon never went away. (And by the way, does everyone out there already know Silk Spectre II: Electric Boogaloo is portrayed by the same actress who played Valerie Cherish’s little blonde protégé on The Comeback? I just found that out, like, yesterday and was momentarily confused because I thought all the Watchmen were supposed to be kinda middle-aged -- but then I checked the Internet Movie Database and, much to my surprise, Malin Akerman’s actually 31, which is somewhat middle-aged, I suppose)...

Anyway, our own Scott Von Doviak and Paul Clark have already weighed in with their reviews of Hollywood’s latest attempt to wring a little KA-CHING! out of the POW! ZAP! BAM! of the funny book aisle, a strategy that’s been serving the Suits pretty well in recent years. I could pontificate here on the way America’s fascination with caped crusaders panders to infantile, imperialist empowerment fantasies, crowding more intelligent, adult material from the multiplex...but not only would that be annoying, it would also be hypocritical, since (A) I like a good funny book movie as much the next geek, (B) another movie about masked superheroes battling supervillains is a helluva lot better than another movie about masked sadists chopping up teenagers and (C) I keep hoping they’ll someday finally make that Wonder Woman movie I’ve been waiting for since I was 12. Mmm...magic lasso...

In the meantime, though, please enjoy the following list from Nerve.com’s very own Legion of Doom as we salute truth, justice, the American way and THE BEST AND WORST COMIC BOOK MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

The Best:

IRON MAN (2008)

True, it’s only been a few weeks since I wrote about Jon Favreau’s rock ‘em sock ‘em revival of the venerable Marvel Comics rust magnet for my Best of 2008 list...but (unlike certain awards-distributing Academies I could mention), I wanted to make sure this excellent film was recognized among the best of the best!

V FOR VENDETTA (2006)

Don't tell Alan Moore, who has never seen it but took the trouble to bad-mouth it anyway, but this adaptation of his Thatcher-era anarchists' fable, directed by Wachowski brothers proxy James McTeigue, does better than pretty good by its source material. The most important changes the filmmakers made from the original text, notably the transformation of Eve's (Natalie Portman) blokey boyfriend into a sardonic gay TV host played by Stephen Fry, actually work well: Fry's performance gives the film some heart, and film is clearly better suited than the printed page when it comes to paying gratuitous tribute to Benny Hill. The movie even inspired David Denby to apoplexy by seeming to present a terrorist as a political hero. Annoying David Denby is always a public service.

HULK (2003)

Remember how last year’s Edward Norton re-boot of The Incredible Hulk was going to prove that the relatively disappointing box office take of the 2003 Hulk was all Ang Lee’s fault? That audiences would embrace a louder, faster, dumber Hulk movie in a way they never did Lee’s artsy-fartsy one? How’s that working out for ya? The 2008 edition racked up almost exactly the same box office total as the 2003, so maybe it’s just that nobody likes poor ol’ Hulk. Or maybe the 2003 version wasn’t so bad after all, which is what I’ve been saying all along. Yes, it has its flaws; Eric Bana doesn’t exactly light up the screen, the CGI star isn’t quite up to snuff in some scenes, and things do take a little longer to get percolating than was perhaps necessary. But Lee brings a lyrical, haunting tone to the picture that may seem at odds with the whole “HULK SMASH!” ethos, but actually taps into a vein of melancholy the character has always possessed. The innovative editing scheme, with its cascade of digital wipes and split screens, is a far more clever and entertaining cinematic analog to reading a comic than anything Zack Snyder does in Watchmen, and the CGI effects do mesmerize at times. Hell, I could have watched this Hulk bouncing his way across the desert for hours.

X-MEN 2 (2003)

Ushering in the modern age of Marvel superhero films, Bryan Singer’s X-Men helped prove that the sight of men in tights – or, in this case, men and women in leather body suits – didn’t have to doom a comic adaptation to cartoonishness. It was Singer’s 2003 sequel, however, that truly elevated the genre by cannily marrying romantic drama, vigorous action and social-intolerance subtexts (here reconfigured from the source material to address sexuality more than race). Aside from Halle Berry’s still-awful wig and Alan Cumming’s grating Nightcrawler, X2 is sharper, smarter and more exhilarating than its predecessor, remaining true to the spirit of its heroes, villains and Dark Phoenix-ish storyline, buoyed by Brian Cox’s superbly villainous William Stryker, and smartly placing as high a premium on character as on spectacle. Which isn’t, however, to say that the spectacle itself isn’t reason enough to check out Singer’s sequel, since an early Stryker-led attack on Professor Xavier’s school, as well as Wolverine’s climactic throwdown with Lady Deathstrike, more than ably deliver the super-skirmish goods.

BATMAN (1989)

A genuine pop culture behemoth in the summer of '89, Tim Burton's blockbuster comic book movie probably did more than any other to make comics adaptations an accepted Hollywood genre, if only for proving that the success of the first couple of Superman movies hadn't been a fluke. This is not one of those accomplishments that nobody can see a downside to, and despite its hellacious popularity, the movie has always had enough attackers to count as controversial, including those who think it's a clumsy piece of storytelling to comics geeks (including Kevin Smith) who think it blasphemed its source material in any number of ways. But Burton's graphic sense and gothic sense of humor always made it a striking, strikingly funny piece of work, and facts are facts: no actor has ever been more compelling or convincingly haunted in a superhero role than Michael Keaton. The passage of twenty years and umpteen sequels and reboots (including Burton and Keaton's deeply flawed but often lovely Batman Returns) has thrown its defects and pluses into sharp relief: it's hard to remember that, in 1989, when Christopher Nolan was all of nineteen years old, many critics were appalled because they thought this picture was too dark.

SUPERMAN II (1980)

The 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman was an outlier, and probably the earliest example of filmmakers at least trying to make a genuinely good superhero movie. But it wasn’t entirely successful, and one sticking point for a lot of fans was the performance as Lex Luthor by Gene Hackman. The role has as many passionate defenders as detractors, but many thought that it was overly campy and unserious, and a superhero movie is generally only as good as its villain. The 1980 sequel would change all that. Introducing three Kryptonian supervillains escaped from the Phantom Zone – the hulking Non, the ice-cold Ursa, and best of all, the fantastic Terence Stamp as the megalomaniacal General Zod – Superman II gave us villains for the ages, and culminated in one of the most exciting fight scenes we’d seen to date. But it still wasn’t a great movie, and longstanding rumor placed the blame on the firing, when production was nearly complete, of Superman director Richard Donner and his replacement with Richard Lester. Lester, while a talented director, didn’t much care about the job and had little affection for the material, and the results are right there on screen. A few years ago, however, the Richard Donner cut was released commercially, and it finally became clear how good Superman II could have been if its original director had been allowed to pursue his vision all along.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five & Six

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

Screengrab Review: Watchmen (Paul's Take)

Paul Clark — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Well, it’s finally here, folks. After more than two decades in development, Watchmen is finally hitting screens nationwide this weekend. In a way, it’s sort of miraculous that it actually panned out. Of course, the road hasn’t been easy, with a seemingly endless parade of directors, screenwriters, producers and stars attached to the project at some point. But to me, it’s even more interesting to observe how comic book culture has progressed to this point. Just over a decade ago, it seems like Batman was the only comic getting the blockbuster treatment, and just about everything else was played for campy nostalgia, e.g. The Phantom. Hell, back in 2000 studios were worried whether the X-Men could sell tickets. So the fact that there’s not only a massively budgeted adaptation of Watchmen out there but also one that’s surprisingly faithful to its dense, ambitious source material just shows how far comics- and comic-book movies- have come in the last ten years. If only the movie was better, this saga would have the happy ending that all Watchmen fans crave.

Admittedly, Watchmen is a tough nut to crack. Combining a murder mystery, a deconstruction of superhero mythology, and a meditation on society brought to the brink of apocalypse, it’s a far cry from the classic potboilers of yesteryear. Even in an adaptation as close as this one, some material would inevitably be pared away (so long, “Tales of the Black Freighter”). But while director Zack Snyder has sworn fidelity to the original graphic novel from the beginning, it’s one thing to visually translate Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ creation to the big screen, and another entirely to turn it into something cinematic. And although Snyder pulls off the former, he falls short of the latter. It looks great, but it never quite works as an honest-to-goodness movie.

Part of the problem is that Snyder never manages to reconcile the inherent expectations of comic book blockbusters with the more literary aspects of Watchmen. There’s plenty of violence in the graphic novel, but to me the action has always taken a back seat to the ideas and themes. Watchmen is less about its heroes’ powers than about their differing ideologies and the way they’re brought out, not only by their circumstances, but also by the times in which they live. This idea that even mankind’s saviors are complex and troubled is a potent one.

Unfortunately, Snyder doesn’t explore this idea in much depth. It’s a shame, since there’s a lot of potential here, especially among the more “freakish” members of the group- Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), essentially a masked Travis Bickle; The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an aging Captain America gone to seed; and “quantum hero” Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), whose sad plight has led him to grow ever more detached from human concerns. But while these characters are pregnant with possibilities, Snyder instead makes the least interesting Watchmen- the second Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) and Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson)- the central players in the drama. It doesn’t help that Akerman’s performance is easily the worst in the movie- she can’t even convincingly gasp for air when she first arrives on Mars- or that Wilson is saddled with a look that makes him look less like Gibbons’ creation than a young Chevy Chase.

But if Snyder doesn’t quite get a grasp on the thematic and subtextual undercurrents of Watchmen, he doesn’t make it work as a straight-up comic book movie either. Oddly enough, some of the blame should be placed on Snyder and his insistence on taking his visual cues straight from the graphic novel. On a shot-by-shot basis, the film is often remarkable to behold, but in putting them together, Snyder and editor William Hoy too often fall back on the shot order used in the graphic novel rather than editing the film in a way that allows scenes to build naturally and in an exciting way. The result is a film that feels like it’s been frozen in amber, beautiful but difficult to embrace.

That said, the movie is far from a disaster. In fact, there’s still plenty to admire about Watchmen, beginning with Snyder’s attention to detail. If nothing else, the visuals of Watchmen are eye candy to fans who’ve longed for years to see this story brought to life. And some of performances are actually quite good, especially those given by Crudup, Morgan, and Haley, who not only feels just right as Rorschach but also even delivers his trademark “hurm” perfectly. Less successful is Matthew Goode as the formidably intelligent Ozymandias- Goode looks and acts the part well enough, but the role really needed some big-star charisma to make it sing, and it’s a little disappointing to think what Tom Cruise, who was allegedly interest in playing the role, might have done with it.

When I saw Watchmen the other night, I was accompanied by someone who’d never read the graphic novel but enjoys darker comic book movies like The Dark Knight. And while I couldn’t help but judge the movie in comparison to the original material (and frankly, doesn’t Snyder more or less invite this?), my friend was able to enjoy the film on the screen, unburdened as he was by expectations. I think this contrast is illustrative. If you’re in the market for something more than the usual heroes-and-villains comic book thriller, Watchmen might just hit the spot. But if you’ve seen this story play out in its ideal medium, any other version will be inherently disappointing. My only hope is that maybe some of those who enjoy the movie will be inspired to pick up the graphic novel, so they too can experience this material the way it was meant to be experienced.

Ed Brubaker: From Comic Book Lowlife to Hollywood Player

Phil Nugent — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:30:00 GMT

All the excitement over movies like Watchmen is likely to create an opening for younger writers working in comics; after all, somebody's got to provide the raw materials that Hollywood will pounce on after it runs out of classic comics series to turn into movies. At least, that's the hope of people like Ed Brubaker, who recently shared his hopes and dreams with Los Angeles Times blogger Greg Braxton. "Last summer changed everything, you could feel it," says Brubaker, who had no credit on The Dark Knight but ended up getting a payday out of it anyway: "I even got money for the Batman movie because DC felt like there were fingerprints of stories I had written in the movie." In a comics universe where "mainstream" superhero creators and "alternative" creators are generally assumed to have limited interest in each other's work and, in their grumpier moments, to wish each other dead, Brubaker is unusual in having started out in the grungiest of "alternative" circles and wound up writing about costumed crimefighters. In the early '90s, Brubaker was part of the autobiographical comics scene with his Lowlife series, which featured thrilling, two-fisted tales of ripping off his employer, having his artwork compared unfavorably to that of Chester Brown, and needed a haircut. (He also edited the superb, single-issue comics anthology Monkey Wrench.) Brubaker began to edge towards the mainstream, and away from illustrating his own scripts, with the story An Accidental Death, which was drawn by Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze) and serialized in Dark Horse Presents in 1992, before being reprinted as a stand-alone volume by Fantagraphics. (That must have been sweet, given that it was the rejection by Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson that inspired the Lowlife story "You're a Good Man, Chester Brown.")

Brubaker had done work for DC Comics starting in the mid-90s, but he didn't start writing superhero comics until 2000, when he first started writing Batman. He's currently writing both Captain America and Daredevil for Marvel. But his real interest, from An Accidental Death to his Marvel Icon series Criminal, is in crime fiction, and much of his most interesting work, including his series Sleeper and the new Incognito (which is about a super-powered villain in the Witness Protection Program) has one foot in the world of superheroes and the other in hard-boiled fiction. Sam Raimi and Tom Cruise are reportedly interested in making a movie version of Sleeper, but in the meantime, Brubaker is testing the waters of live action with Angel of Death, a new web series he's created for Crackle.com, Sony's bid for your on-line entertainment fix. The series, which premieres this week and will consist of ten weekly installments, stars stunt woman and Death Proof star Zoe Bell as a hired killer who turns on her employers after suffering a traumatic head injury. (The cast also includes Doug Jones and Lucy Lawless, which must have made for quite an on-set reunion; Bell used to work as Lawless's stunt double on Xena: Warrior Princess. Brubaker says that Sony "green-lit it before I even wrote it, and they started filming two weeks after the final draft. I guess that's the world we're living in right now." You can watch episode one below:

From Crackle: Angel of Death Ep 1 "Edge" starring Zoe Bell

The Killing Joke

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

For some fans, it won’t be enough for Heath Ledger to win a posthumous Academy Award for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. The not-at-all-crazy folks at the new site The Ultimate Joker are taking it a step further: they don’t want anyone else to ever play the role again.

“They've launched a petition calling for studios to withdraw the character for good from any future Batman movies, a somewhat strange request given all the actors who have stepped into the Joker's murderous shoes on screens large and small,” according to a report at Wired.com. “We truly believe Ledger's performance as Joker is the best an actor could ever do," the site's team leader, Fer Barbella, told Wired.

Despite this belief, the team of Ledger enthusiasts is restricting their petition to big-screen, live action portrayals. “Television and animation is off our radar,” Barbella says, before conceding that he enjoys the work of Cesar Romero and even Jack Nicholson in the role of the clown prince of crime.

If you’d like to join this very important crusade, check out the Ultimate Joker site. It’s a shame, though – why couldn’t somebody have thought of this tactic in time to prevent Steve Martin from taking on the role of Inspector Clouseau?

Related:
He's Hot, He's Oscar-Nominated and He's Dead: The Heath Ledger Stealth Award Campaign
Jokers Wild About Heath Ledger's Oscar Chances

Christian Bale Goes Apeshit

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:28:00 GMT

I missed the news the first time around about Christian Bale losing his shit all over a Terminator Salvation crew member. More specifically, as the Daily News puts it, "The Dark Knight star launched into a lengthy, expletive-laced tirade against Shane Hurlbut, Terminator's director of cinematography, after he allegedly walked into the actor's shot.

"I want you off the fucking set, you prick!" Bale said. "I'm gonna fucking kick your fucking ass if you don't shut up for a second!"

But don't take our word for it! TMZ has a tape of the incident, which exists because "producers sent the audio to their insurance company in case Bale walked off the film."

Enjoy!

Smells Like Indie Spirit: Our Favorite Sundance Films Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

SEX, LIES & VIDEO (1989) & ON_LINE (2002)

In his entertaining film biz tell-all Down and Dirty Pictures, Peter Biskind chronicles the ways in which Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein defined, respectively, the artistic integrity and the razzle-dazzle gold rush hucksterism of the current independent film era. With sex, lies and videotape, Steven Soderbergh fell somewhere in between: the critical and commercial success of his Audience Award-winning Sundance debut secured the festival’s place on the cultural radar, stoking the rags-to-riches dreams of countless would-be filmmakers, producers, and acquisitions execs in the years to follow. Yet at the same time, looking back, it's hard to see what all the fuss was about: unlike subsequent buzz dynamos like Reservoir Dogs, sex, lies and videotape is merely a quiet, low concept talk-fest about...well, the title says it all. The writing and directing are fine, and James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher and Laura San Giacomo all turn in top-notch performances, but the quirky dialogue and somewhat (but not too) edgy subject matter (impotence, masturbation, voyeurism, etc.) are by now such familiar staples of the cinematic landscape that it’s hard to remember a time when a film like Soderbergh's could be considered groundbreaking (in the same way Sam Adams was amazing once upon a time to people who’d grown up on Bud and Miller, but hardly stands out in the microbrew-packed liquor stores of 2009).

My own (far-less-heralded) Sundance debut, meanwhile, came thirteen years later, when I attended the festival as co-screenwriter of the Jed Weintrob feature On_Line, a digital age chamber piece consciously patterned on Soderbergh’s film (right down to our original title, Sex, Lies & Internet). Yet, like many indie hopefuls attempting to follow the overnight success template of filmmakers like Soderbergh, our project fell through the cracks (despite somehow making the hyper-competitive Sundance cut): there were no high-stakes bidding wars, and (with the exception of a few astute critiques from the likes of Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir) most of the reviews were downright nasty. But though many are called and few are chosen, it’s nevertheless hard to resist the lure of Park City as a filmmaker or cinephile just hoping to be there when the lightning strikes again.

MEMENTO (2000)

Christopher Nolan had already made a festival splash with his creepy first film, Following, which, like Memento, was a collaboration with his brother Jonathan. It was no secret that his latest was going to be a big deal – by the time it got to Sundance, where it eventually won Nolan a screenwriting award (anticipating the Academy Award nomination it would get the following year), it had already garnered tons of acclaim at the Venice Film Festival for its clever narrative structure and intricate chronological unfolding. There was a lot more to Memento than most critics realized, though; Nolan and his brother, by telling the story of a man with no memory on a desperate quest to avenge the death of his wife, weren’t just presenting Park City audiences with a fairly cerebral noir. They were actually telling one of the most philosophically complex stories that any recent film has presented, a sneaky-deep meditation on identity, memory, and the way truth is created rather than discovered. It’s not in the fairly pedestrian revenge plot that the depths of Nolan’s film are to be discovered, but in Leonard’s memories of Sammy Jankis, and what they reveal about himself and his quest. Nolan went on to helm the Batman movie franchise, which only slightly suggests what seemed obvious when watching Memento: that he was a filmmaker of big ideas dressed up in genre clothes.

TARNATION (2003)

Jonathan Caouette's film stirred up terrific buzz at the 2004 festival, and for good reason: a visually raucous, stirringly expressive depiction of Caouette's relationship with his schizophrenic mother, which Caouette assembled from a mix of photographs, Super-8 footage, videotape and answering machine messages and mixed together on his home computer, it was probably the most exciting foray into filmed memoir to screen there since Ross McElwee started unreeling his diary entries. The movie inspired some trepidation from critics who feared that it would inspire more bad imitations than any Sundance hit since The Blair Witch Project, but it actually didn't take off in theaters as some expected; it may have been too painful for mass consumption. Caouette is currently putting the finishing touches on his second feature, the music documentary All Tomorrow's Parties.

OLD JOY (2006)

Reportedly to the disappointment of even Sundance director Geoffrey Gilmore, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy screened at Sundance 2006 not in competition – where it belonged, as evidenced by its prominent inclusion on numerous critics’ year-end top ten lists – but instead in the more obscure “Frontier” section. Despite such a low-profile debut, however, Reichardt’s feature nonetheless garnered the attention it deserved, its tale of two childhood friends’ reunion for a camping trip in Oregon’s Cascade mountains proving the very type of modest, poised indie Sundance was originally conceived to showcase. Infused with the regret, fear, and anxiety that accompanies growing up, as well as a mood of socio-political unease conveyed by Air America radio broadcasts that function as the story’s de facto Greek Chorus, it’s a film with a sorrowful temperament and a shrewd sense of visual space (Reichardt shooting the Oregonian wilderness with awe, trepidation and reverence), as well as one that pulls off the delicate feat of commenting on larger national concerns that its character-driven narrative never overtly addresses.

TROUBLE THE WATER (2008)

Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's documentary about Katrina and its after-effects really fleshes out the lives hinted at in the news headlines. Specifically, it's a sprawling portrait of Katrina survivor, aspiring rapper, and amateur camera bug Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her nearest and dearest, and Deal and Lessin deserve a lot of credit for being able to think on their feet and improvise: they had headed to Louisiana cold in hopes of making a movie about the hurricane relief efforts but ran into a stone wall of government unhelpfulness and were about to head back home when Roberts, who they met in a shelter, got up in their faces and asked if they'd like to see her home movies of the gathering storm and the days she and and others spent stranded in their attic, watching the waters rise. When they saw what they had, they must have felt a little like the guy in Hunter Thompson's story about falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids. (Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2008 festival.)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

Pat Hingle, 1924 - 2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Pat Hingle, who died this past weekend at the age of 84, was one of the most familiar and dependable of all American character actors, over the course of a career in film, TV, and the stage that spanned some fifty years. Born in Denver, Colorado, he served in the navy during World War II and studied acting at the University of Texas. In the first several years of his career, Hingle appeared in the Broadway productions of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (as Gooper, father to the no-neck monsters), Archibald Macleish's J.B. (in the title role), and William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (for which he received a Tony nomination). He also made his movie debut (not counting an uncredited small role in On the Waterfront) in the 1957 Method melodrama End as a Man (A.K.A. The Strange One, based on a play that he had also appeared in. Hingle was offered the title role in the 1960 Elmer Gantry, but before the film started shooting, he suffered a horrendous accident, falling more than fifty feet down an elevator shaft. He was laid up for more than a year recovering from his injuries, which included a fractured skull, his left leg broken in three places, and the loss of a finger. Elmer went ahead with Burt Lancaster , who won an Academy Award for it. Hingle maintained a good-natured attitude towards the whole thing: ""I know that if I had played Elmer Gantry, I would have been more of a movie name. But I'm sure I would not have done as many plays as I've done. I had exactly the kind of career I had hoped for. And I never, never forget that I'm the recipient of the blessing that is life. It was given to me to try again."

Hingle returned to work looking older, gruffer, squatter, and craggier: an easy casting call for authority figures at a time when those roles often meant dads who don't understand their kids (as in Splendor in the Grass, where he played the father of Warren Beatty, who was all of fourteen years his junior) or cops who were either crooked or self-righteously brutal or both. He appeared with Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High, The Gauntlet, and Sudden Impact, played Sally Field's father in Norma Rae, starred in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Price, and did an unholy shitload TV, notably playing Colonel Tom Parker to Kurt Russell's Elvis Presley in John Carpenter's 1979 Elvis and Sam Rayburn to Randy Quaid's Lyndon Johnson in the 1987 LBJ: The Early Years.

Unlike a lot of actors who work that much, Hingle has the distinction of having continued to get better, tapping into deeper veins of regret and exposing a streak of wry humor as he started to get almost as old as his characters. Reviewing the 1985 The Falcon and the Snowman, in which he played the hardass FBI-agent father of Timothy Hutton, Pauline Kael wrote, "It's a role Hingle has played dozens of times --he's a pop-culture joke in this role--but I doubt if he has ever done it as well." Five years later, he went to town in perhaps his best movie role, the terrifying cracker crime lord Bobo Justus in Stephen Frears's Jim Thompson adaptation The Grifters, giving Anjelica Huston the shivers and making it seem as if all the secrets to the universe might be contained in the line, "You'll never shit right again." He also played Commissioner Gordon in the 1989 Batman, a role that he would reprise in three other movies, playing it alongside a total of three different different--Batmans? Batmen? Whatever. More recently, he played Ben Franklin in a late-'90s revival of the Broadway musical 1776 and turned up in the movies A Thousand Acres, Muppets from Space, Shaft, and Talladega Nights. He died at his home in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, where he decided to settle after working there shooting the 1986 Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King's directing debut. ""I really do believe there was a divine hand that headed me here," he had told a local reporter.. "I am happy that I think it's going to end here."

How Philip Seymour Hoffman Would Have Played The Penguin

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Here at the Screengrab, we've been mongering (and squashing) rumors about possible villains for the next Batman movie, including Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin, Johnny Depp as the Riddler and (mmmmmm) Angelina Jolie as Catwoman...

...and though Hoffman denied the rumor of his own supervillainy back in September, please to enjoy this YouTube clip of the Synecdoche, NY star discussing the way he might have approached the part.

Related Stories:

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Michael Caine, Batspoiler

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Ho! And also, ho-ho! Happy Festivus from all of us here at The Screengrab!

Last week, we shared some of our favorite cinematic comebacks of all time, but today the gifts we're really hoping to get are the following COMEBACKS WE'D MOST LIKE TO SEE IN 2009, starting with...

MARISA TOMEI

Is it generally accepted that Tomei is as good as she is? She won an Academy Award for her supporting performance in 1992's My Cousin Vinny, but, as also happened with Mira Sorvino (who was ridiculed for having won an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite) and Jennifer Tilly (who was teased just for having been nominated for Bullets Over Broadway), that achievement inspired some snickering from people who don't understand why you'd waste an award on someone in a comedy. Never mind that Tomei's performance in that movie, which gave audiences as much sheer pleasure as anything run through a projector that year, couldn't have been easy to pull off, or that it summed up as well as anything else she's done what a remarkable combination of brains and adorability she has as an actress. Devoted to working in the theater, and not averse to doing TV when the role is right, she takes long breaks between movie jobs, though she keeps her hand in enough that nobody refers to The Wrestler as her comeback picture. But only for a brief time, in the wake of her Oscar win, did she inspire filmmakers to place her at the center of a few starring vehicles (Untamed Heart, Only You, The Family Perez). From Vinny to In the Bedroom to last year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to The Wrestler, the bulk of her most striking movie work has consisted of supporting roles in which her character was defined by her relationship to a man who had more lines and more screen time. And almost any time when Tomei is in a movie but not onscreen counts as wasted time.

MICHAEL KEATON

Does Keaton have issues? As an actor, he's come an incredibly long way from his screen debut in Night Shift, where he was still basically doing stand-up comedy in character -- but ever since hanging up his Bat cape and apparently losing Tim Burton's contact information, he's bounced from role to role, seldom betraying any sign that he cares about sustaining a viable career. He did reportedly beg for his role in Jackie Brown, though he left less impact on the finished film than he did when, as a gag, he reprised the character for a surprise cameo in Out of Sight. He gave a startling performance as a genius-level sociopathic criminal in Desperate Measures, but the downside is that he gave it in Desperate Measures. He may just be a man with more talent than taste, but given his background, it is suprising that he doesn't attempt more comedies; maybe he felt stung after the commercial failure of the 1996 Multiplicity, an underrated film in which he played multiple roles and worked like a saint to keep all the movie's balls in the air. Still,everything you'd guess about him from his acting seems designed to make you wonder why he'd want to appear in Herbie: Fully Loaded or be reincarnated as a snowman in Jack Frost: how hard up can he be for ways to impress his kids? Some of his recent films went all but unreleased (including The Merry Gentlemen, which he directed), but he gave one of his best performances last year on TV, in the cable miniseries The Company, where his legendary CIA brainmaster James Jesus Angleton gave you the feeling that decades of American history were decided by the icy paranoia of a few quietly deranged men in dark rooms. He also famously dropped out of the TV series Lost after learning that the producers had changed their minds about killing off his character in the pilot episode. The one thing that's plain and clear about Keaton is that he's a restless man whose reluctant to settle for the obvious, even if he'd rather star in White Noise than be idle while waiting for his next chance to shake up the Richter scale in a meaningful way. Some young hotshot director who's looking to make waves should plug himself into Keaton's aura and see what happens.

KELLY LYNCH

Lynch is regally beautiful enough, and capable of summoning up enough style and attitude, that you might be tempted to describe her as the sane equivalent of Sharon Stone, if that didn't undervalue her acting range: though she ought to be a movie star, Lynch is also actress enough to pass for a normal human being. For all practical purposes, her movie career really begin with Drugstore Cowboy, where as Diane, the drug-fiend housewife, she burned holes in the screen with her level gaze until exiting the picture with her vulnerabilities finally exposed, a thoroughbred on shaky legs. So far as good movies go, that was pretty much the end of her career, too, though she's continued to give solidly crafted, emotionally rich performances in all manner of dreck, from the "ooh, edgy!" 1993 romantic comedy Three of Hearts, in which she yearned for fellow M.I.A. Sherilyn Fenn, to the 2005 head trip The Jacket, where she gave Adrien Brody more reason than usual to have the shivers. Her chops are formidable and she clearly loves a challenge, and trying to keep her dignity and earn her paycheck in Mr. Magoo clearly counts as a challenge. But she probably deserves better. I know those of us who are her fans do.

SUZY AMIS

Amis has a face that, at least when it's filtered through the lenses of the cameras that love her unconditionally, could make you forget about everything else in the world if your hair was on fire. As an actress, she invariably communicates warmth and sweetness, but she can dredge up subterranean feelings of anger and pain when she needs to. Rolling Stone gave her its vote as the Next Big Thing actress back in the late 1980s, and in little seen indie fare such as Rocket Gibralter, Watch It, and Michael Almereyada's Twister and Nadja, as well as bigger-budget but well-hidden films such as John Boorman's Where the Heart Is and Bruce Beresford's Rich in Love, she delivered everything a movie "It girl" could deliver but the box office success. One of her rare starring vehicles, The Ballad of Little Jo, developed a small cult following after it was smuggled onto cable TV, though perhaps the most stunning evidence of how much she could give a movie came with the 1993 two-character filmed play Two Small Bodies, a weird take on the Alice Crimmins case kept on life support by Amis and her co-star Fred Ward, who probably deserves his own entry on this list. She finally got to be in a hit in 1995 when she was tapped to supply the token amount of estrogen to the cast of The Usual Suspects, a movie where the late-arriving news that her character has been murdered off-screen hits the viewer like a lead weight hitting one's foot. But then she took on a nothing role in James Cameron's Titanic, and she and Cameron (who at the time was married to his fourth wife and Terminator leading lady, Linda Hamilton) had an affair -- then the next thing you know, Cameron's divorce was final and the two of them were getting married, and she hasn't worked since, just as Hamilton was out of circulation while she and Cameron were married. I look forward to the day that James Cameron meets his future sixth wife the way some people look forward to getting their hands on their 401k.

ELIZABETH PENA

In the mid-1980s, in such movies as Down and Out in Beverly Hills, La Bamba, and Jacob's Ladder, Pena established herself as a pouty, steamy cuddlebug, but one whose pout concealed teeth that could bite: her expression of disgust when looking at the macho moron she married in La Bamba leaves a stronger visual memory than the happy romantic scenes of Lou Diamond Phillips' Richie Valens courting his unruffled blonde kewpie doll Donna. As a post-ingenue actress, Pena had her highest-profile role in John Sayles' Lone Star, sitting on a car hood with Chris Cooper, trying to process the information that their love was not meant to be, big time. She can currently be seen in the ensemble cast of the family comedy Nothing Like the Holidays, physically a little puffier-looking but with banked fires still smoldering behind her eyes. Someone needs to provide her with a canvass broad enough to let those fires flame out.

Click Here For Part Two, Three & Four

Contributor: Phil Nugent

Yesterday's Hits: Home Alone (1990, Chris Columbus)

Paul Clark — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The 1990 holiday movie slate boasted a number of sure-fire hits from many of Hollywood’s most bankable names. Arnold Schwarzenegger was getting pushed around by a classroom full of kids, Sylvester Stallone was revisiting his most iconic character once again, Tim Burton was debuting his first project after Batman made him Hollywood’s hottest young director, and Kevin Costner premiered his debut behind the camera, an epic Western that went on to win several Oscars. Heck, there was even a new Godfather movie. Yet none of these movies went on to become the year’s top grossing blockbuster. No, the reigning king of 1990’s box office boasted little more than a precocious child star, a kid-friendly concept, and a memorable scream.

That movie, of course, was Home Alone, directed by Chris Columbus. Sold to moviegoers with the tagline, “a family comedy… without the family,” the movie’s premise encompassed every kid’s dream- having the run of the house with no adult supervision- and many parents’ nightmare- accidentally leaving their child behind when they leave on vacation. At the center of the action was Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, for whom producer/screenwriter John Hughes specifically wrote the role after previously working with him on the previous year’s Uncle Buck. Expectations for Home Alone were relatively low, but good word of mouth about the film and its young star made it the runaway hit of the season, and its overwhelming success led to two sequels.

Alas, Home Alone doesn’t hold up very well, in part because of the mountain of contrivances the movie asks us to accept in order to make the storyline work. To begin with, although I’m sure that children have been accidentally left behind by their parents, it’s hard to believe that it would happen the way it does in the movie- surely one of the adults in the house was an early riser, no? Likewise, a repeated gag involving characters being fooled into thinking that a violent-sounding movie scene is really happening in the house is kind of a forehead-slapper- like any reasonably intelligent adult couldn’t tell the difference between real gunshots to those playing on a television?

But then, intelligence seems to be in short supply among the characters. One of my cinematic pet peeves is when a movie requires that its characters be idiots and Home Alone has some real doozies. Chief among the movie’s morons are Harry and Marv, a pair of bumbling burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Here’s a pair so thickheaded that they get all manner of indignities vested upon them by a little kid, yet never think that, hey, maybe it’d be best to just cut their losses and run rather than risk incurring still more pain and suffering. Of course, it helps that Kevin is preternaturally at jerry-rigging booby traps all over the house with relatively little preparation, and placing them just where the crooks will strike.

This is indicative of the movie’s biggest problem, then Kevin is almost never convincing as a real kid. Oh sure, Culkin bugs his eyes out real cute and delivers the wiseassed one-liners almost like he means them. But it’s just hard to believe that Kevin would be capable of most of what he does or says, whether he’s delivering a monologue in the bathroom mirror or faking out the baddies. Part of the blame must fall on Culkin himself. Like most child actors, Culkin has self-assurance in spades but can’t sell the dialogue as his own, especially not when he’s given lines like “Bless this highly nutritious microwavable macaroni and cheese dinner and the people who sold it on sale. Amen.” Culkin was the biggest child star of his day, making $8 million a movie at the peak of his popularity, but it’s easy to see why he hasn’t been able to make the leap to grown-up roles with the same success that contemporaries like Elijah Wood have.

Time and again, I’ve bemoaned the tendency of many adults to forgive family movies their faults and manipulations on the grounds that they’re “just for kids.” While I realize that children aren’t particularly discerning movie watchers, it doesn’t seem right to use this as an excuse to foist subpar entertainment upon them. Home Alone might have been a hit in its day, but it’s also manipulative and often stupid, and making children watch movies like this is practically an insult to their budding intelligence. With all the high-quality family movies now available on DVD, there’s really no reason to show your kids Home Alone.

Set Your DVR!: December 15 - 22, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

What a great week for movies on cable! Here’s what’s coming up that’s worth your time. In the spirit of the holidays, I’ve even gotten a little expansive. But this week brings another embarrassment of riches.

The times are, as always, in Central/Eastern format. Also, as always, please let me know in comments if you see something coming up that I’ve missed. I’ll try to add it to the regular column if I can, but my time will be tight in the next few weeks, so please don’t be too disappointed if I don’t get to your recommendation.

Monday, December 15:
2:45/3:45 pm: Mystery Train on IFC. Jim Jarmusch’s triptych about the strange charms of Memphis, TN.
6:25/7:25 pm: George Washington on IFC.

Tuesday, December 16:
3:25/4:25 am: Mystery Train on IFC.
6:50/7:50 am: George Washington on IFC.
7/8 am: Decision at Sundown on TCM. A Randolph Scott & Budd Boetticher Western, and that means good.
7:30/8:30 am: Batman on AMC. This is the 1966 Batman, the very definition of campy.
10:25/11:25 am: Howl’s Moving Castle on IFC. Miyazaki’s great animated film about war and magic and love and identity, presented here in the original Japanese with subtitles.
12:30/1:30 pm: George Washington on IFC.
4:05/5:05 pm: The Thin Red LIne on IFC. Malick’s unconventional anti-war drama is a force of nature.
5/6 pm: The Cincinnati Kid on TCM. What could be more exciting than Steve McQueen playing high-stakes poker?
7/8 pm: Shadow of a Doubt on TCM. Great little second-tier Hitchcock film that ought to be in the first tier.
11 pm/12 am: The Third Man on TCM. If you like movies and haven’t seen this, you MUST rectify your oversight immediately.

Wednesday, December 17:
8:30/9:30 pm: Death on the Nile on TCM. A Hercule Poirot mystery that was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. The nonstop excitement practically screams “heavyset Belgian detective!”
8/9 pm: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The New World on IFC. That's a lot of Malick for one sitting!

Thursday, December 18:
1:30/2:30 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
4:25/5:25 am: The New World on IFC.
9:15/10:15 am: The Naked City on TCM. One of the greatest film noirs.
10:30/11:30 pm: Blade Runner on SCIFI. Always worth a viewing.
11 pm/12 am: Vanishing Point on FMC. As the Zen koan says, -There is no why. There is only Kowalski driving through the desert.

Friday, December 19:
12/1 am: Before Sunset on WE. I try not to mention movies that will be broken by commercials, but this one, a sequel to 1995’s Before Sunrise, has a certain charm in its older, wiser take on young love.
1:30/2:30 am: Elephant on IFC. Dreamy Van Sant flick about high school snipers.
3/4 am: Vanishing Point on FMC.
8:45/9:45 am: Paths of Glory on TCM.
5:30/6:30 pm: The Others on OXYGEN. Pleasantly creepy ghost story starring Nicole Kidman.
6:15/7:15 pm: The Player on IFC. Altman’s tour de force “conventional Hollywood” film, which starts with an extended homage to Touch of Evil and proceeds to tear down the walls of Old Hollywood.
8:30/9:30 pm: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on IFC. Many Wes Anderson fans felt that this was the moment when his whimsy and prop fetish finally overwhelmed his ability to tell a story. I think there’s a beating heart in this story, but The Darjeeling Limited was an unpleasant stillborn mess.
11 pm/12 am: The Face of Another on IFC. Brilliant and creepy Japanese horror film about the slippery nature of identity.

Saturday, December 20:
2/3 am: The Face of Another on IFC.
5:30/6:30 am: The Ox-Bow Incident on AMC.
7/8 am: The Hidden Fortress on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s tale of a princess in peril, swept away by war, protected by her loyal general, and kept constantly on the verge of trouble by a couple of bumbling peasants. Reportedly one of the major inspirations for Star Wars.
7/8 am: The Others on OXYGEN.
7:15/8:15 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. Iconic John Ford Western about the shootout at the OK Corral.
2:30/3:30 pm: 8 Women on LOGO.
5:35/6:35 pm: Gosford Park on IFC. Robert Altman’s brilliant upstairs/downstairs Edwardian murder mystery.
8:30/9:30 pm: Mulholland Dr. on LOGO. One of David Lynch’s best films, propelled by dream-logic and horror.

Sunday, December 21:
8:45/9:45 am: Kiss of Death on FMC. Top-notch film noir. Unfortunately, it’s playing at the same time as...
8:45/9:45 am: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse on IFC. Fritz Lang’s 1933 thriller that didn’t just invent the procedural, but built it on a parable about a crime boss able to mesmerize his subordinates with his words and imagery. Lang fled the Nazis for America almost immediately after its release. The ability of many of the scenes to retain their shock value today is a testament to this movie's sheer brilliance.
12:15/1:15 pm: Gosford Park on IFC.

Monday, December 22:
2:45/3:45 am: The 400 Blows on TCM. Francois Truffaut’s incredibly powerful ode to child neglect and juvenile delinquency.
7/8 am: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC. Fantastic Louis Malle flick about a boarding school in France during the Nazi occupation that’s hiding a young Jew.
11 am/12 pm: Bringing Up Baby on TCM. A screwball comedy classic that everyone should see at least once in this all-too-short life.
12:30/1:30 pm: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.

The Top 50 Movies of 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It’s getting harder and harder for us poor drones of the blogosphere to stay current. We haven’t even begun to compile our final thoughts on the films of 2008, and already the Times Online has published their list of the top 50 movies of 2009.

Granted, it’s purely speculative nonsense. “Which hot franchises will step up to fill the spaces left by Batman, Bond and Indy? We’ve taken a look through the studio schedules and picked out the most promising prospects for the coming year.” Some of their choices look pretty safe. The number one pick is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and others finishing in the top ten include Star Trek (#3), the Da Vinci Code follow-up Angels & Demons (#6) and Monsters vs. Aliens (#8). Going out a little further on a limb, they’ve selected the Dillinger biopic Public Enemies to finish behind only Harry Potter. Sure, it’s got Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, but it’s also got a whiff of the brat pack bomb Mobsters about it, no?

Of course, the real fun is to be found further down the list. I’m glad someone is optimistic enough to believe Fanboys will finally be released in theaters; on the other hand, I’m somewhat skeptical that “curiosity value alone guarantees S. Darko a strong opening weekend.” Perhaps most intriguing is #42: “Them, a recently announced feature to be directed by Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz’s Edgar Wright, is not, as far as we can tell, an update of the hoary old giant ant chiller but a fictionalised adaptation of Jon Ronson’s investigative book about the shadowy conspiracies that operate behind our notional governments. Unless it turns out that the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group actually are all enormous ants.”

Check out the full list starting here.

Related:
Sequel to "Donnie Darko" Is on the Way, Much to the Dismay of the Creator of "Donnie Darko"
Your First Look at Star Trek 90210

Batman vs. Batman

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Batman has lawyered up. No, not Gotham’s Dark Knight, although he may want to send a team of attorneys to Hollywood when he hears that the score for his latest cinematic adventure has been deemed ineligible for Oscar consideration by those jokers in the Academy. The litigious Batman in question is actually a city in southeastern Turkey – that’s right, the city of Batman, Turkey.

Batman mayor Huseyin Kalkan is suing Warner Bros. for a share of The Dark Knight’s royalties for using the city’s name without permission. According to The Independent, “Mr Kalkan, who received a 10-month jail sentence at the beginning of this year for praising a Kurdish rebel leader, says the film's psychological impact on Batman inhabitants is to blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate. Former natives of Batman are also said to have encountered obstacles when attempting to register their businesses abroad.”

Many questions spring to mind, but the first one is, of course…you’re just now hearing about Batman? Batman, the guy who’s had his own comic book for nearly 70 years? Who had a hit television show in the 1960s? Who starred in six feature films before The Dark Knight? The most recognizable fictional character on earth besides maybe Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald? That Batman?

Nevertheless, Mr. Kalkan claims “"There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.” Somehow I don’t think the Warner Bros. suits are breaking a sweat over this one. “No one from the town of Batman has explained why it has taken so many years to take legal action,” The Independent reports. “Cynics have suggested that the latest film's hefty profits – it is about to pass the $1bn (£670m) mark at the box office – may have played a part.” Ya think?

Related:
Wall Street Meltdown Boosts Dark Knight's Oscar Hopes
Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't As Good As You Think It Is

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Oct. 25-31, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Hello, kiddies! It’s me, Pennywise the evil clown, and I’ve got a bone to pick with the Screengrabbers this week. In fact I just may PICK THEIR BONES CLEAN. It’s bad enough they showed me no respect in The Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven). But to ignore me completely in the Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon (Parts One, Two, Three and Four)? Unthinkable!

Just look at these other so-called horror classics they saw fit to highlight this week. The Exorcist? I find chunks of guys like him in my stool! Tenebrae? What does that even mean? Seizure? Seize this! Halloween and Friday the 13th? Those are just days of the week to me.

Look, if you want to write about Star Wars auditions or Batman sequels or Zack and Miri making pornos, I’m not going to complain about being left out. Hell, write about farting dog movies for all I care. But when it comes to horror, let’s not forget who’s boss.

Happy Halloween!

One Billion Bats

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:15:00 GMT

In the Los Angeles Times' Hero Complex blog, Geoff Boucher has a lengthy conversation with Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, whose superhero epic is teetering on the verge of making a billion dollars. Considering that's just U.S. and foreign box office, and doesn't even take into account merchandising and the vast sums it's going to rake in once it comes to home video, that's the kind of cash that even Bruce Wayne would greet with a low whistle. Nolan, though, if he isn't exactly taking the news in stride, at least isn't letting it go to his head: "I can't get my arms around it, to be frank. It's mystifying. It's terrific, but at the same time, it's a little abstract, the numbers are so big...there's something liberating in knowing that my next film, whatever it is, isn't going to make as much money. I don't have to try for years."

Wait a minute..."whatever it is"? Surely it's going to be a third Batman movie. Surely Nolan isn't going to walk away from a franchise that netted widespread critical acclaim and a ten-figure box office return, right? The man himself is cagey on the subject, saying that if there's a compelling enough story to tell, he'll be on board, but noting that no such story has yet revealed itself, and asking the very sensible question: "How many good third movies in a franchise can people name?"

The rest of the interview (part two is here) is equally engaging, featuring Nolan's thoughts on the character of Batman, the loss of Heath Ledger and what it means to the franchise, the widely-argued politics of The Dark Knight, and his favorite scene in the movie. He never gets around to answering whether or not he'll helm the next installment, but our money is on yes. A billion dollars can buy you a lot of story.

Why So Serious?: The Dark Knight in the Political World

Set Your DVR!: October 20 - October 28, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

What a great time of year for movies! If you're a fan of vintage horror, that is. Here's the DVR-worthy flicks on cable in the upcoming week.

Mon, Oct 20:

1:30/2:30 pm: The Haunting on TCM. Again, this is the 1963 Robert Wise version.

Tues, Oct 21:

11/12 am: Rio Grande on TCM. Classic John Wayne/John Ford Western.

8:45/9:45 pm: The Public Enemy on TCM. Buncha dirty rats doin' low-down dirty-rat bidness.

Wed Oct 22:

6:45/7:45 am: Batman on AMC. The 1966 version. Shark repellent, my friends. Need I say more?

8:20/9:20 am: George Washington on IFC (repeat at 2:35/3:35 pm). I'm not always going to repeat prior recommendations, but man, I like this movie.

3:30/4:30 pm: The Enchanted Cottage on TCM. I've never seen this, but it is apparently a much-loved, hard-to-see romance between an injured soldier and a lady who isn't much to look at. Unreleased on DVD.

6:15/7:15 pm: Last Days on IFC (repeat 10/23 at 2:00 am).

7/8 pm: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on TCM. This is the one with Charles Laughton.

Thur, Oct 23:

Start the day (or previous night) with a Val Lewton film festival on TCM!

12:45/1:45 am: Cat People on TCM. The first collaboration between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton (the king of no-budget atmospheric eerieness). Not exactly horror, but not exactly anything else.

2/3 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Not just a killer Roky Erickson song, this is another Tourneur/Lewton collaboration.

3:15/4:15 am: Isle of the Dead on TCM. Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff.

4:30/5:30 am: The Body Snatcher on TCM. Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff AND Bela Lugosi, directed by Robert Wise, and based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, of all things.

5:45/6:45 am: Shattered Glass on IFC. Some people missed this 2003 film in which Hayden Christiansen plays a character who is - get this - supposed to be wooden. Based on the true events around the fantasist Stephen Glass's deception of The New Republic

7:35/8:35 am: Manderlay on IFC (repeat at 1:35/2:35 pm). Lars von Trier's follow-up to Dogville is about a Southern plantation in the 1930s that has never freed its slaves. Do you like von Trier? Then you'll probably like this.

2:15/3:15 pm: D.O.A. on TCM. Film noir classic.

UPDATE: 8 pm (not sure of the time zone): Red Sun on Retroplex (free on Comcast Digital). This is a Western starring Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, Alain Delon, and Toshiro Mifune. Whoa! Thanks to Janet for the hat tip.

Fri, Oct 24:

4:15/5:15 am: Manderlay on IFC (repeat).

Sat, Oct 25:

2:45/3:45 am: 200 Motels on TCM. Frank Zappa's wacky movie. Are you a fan of Zappa? No? Then you'll hate it. Unreleased on DVD.

5:15/6:15 am: The Curse of Frankenstein on AMC. Classic Frankenstein movie starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

7/8 am: Kiru on IFC (repeat at 1:50/2:50 pm). Samurai comedy! Yep.

8/9 am: Night of the Living Dead on SCIFI. Oh, you know this one already? You must have brains. Braaaaaaains.

11:30 pm/12:30 am: Catwoman on OXYGEN. Perhaps the scariest movie of the Halloween season. This movie has Halle Berry in the lead! (BWA-HA-HA!) And she’s trying to be sexy/sultry/non-robotic! (AAAAAAAH!) Actually, this is far too scary for anyone to view.

Sun, Oct 26:

12:45/1:45 am: The Honeymoon Killers on TCM. Brilliant and utterly repellent movie based on the true story of the Lonely Hearts Killers, who preyed on divorced women in the late 40s. Between this and Mad Men, you get the feeling that the mid-20th century wasn't such a great time to be an independent women.

7/8 am: The Ghost of Yotsuya on IFC. Ghosts! Samurais! Spurned Wives! Revenge!

10:00/11:00 am: The Flower of Evil on IFC. Directed by the Hitchcock-influenced Claude Chabrol. I haven't seen this one, but I run hot and cold on Chabrol movies.

1/2 pm: Kiss of Death on FMC. Fantastic film noir.

2:30/3:30 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. This isn't a great movie, but it has a few great - I'd go as far as "iconic" - scenes, most notably David Naughton's transformation into the title monster. Does AMC cut for content? I often skip movies showing on AMC because I hate watching commercials during films. And I don't know if the movies are running uncut with commercials or cut down for size. Let me know in comments if you have a better idea about what AMC is doing.

Mon, Oct 27 (ze spillover from Sunday):

1:30/2:30 am: Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Grey on TCM. Now this is a great movie, Dreyer’s 1932 vampire epic. One of the greatest vampire movies ever made, in fact, up there with Nosferatu. I don't know how it will look in this cut, but I believe that time and neglect have left all existing prints somewhat faded.

3/4 am: Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte on AMC. Horror film starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, and Agnes Moorehead. Sounds like a recipe for overheated Southern goth to me, but it's pretty highly rated, so what do I know?

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Fox Takes Marvel's Dare

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Adaptations of Marvel Comics have been doing great business at the box office for almost ten years now, from X-Men to Spider-Man to Iron Man. And, just like in the comics, when one creative team doesn't find an audience, the big bosses at Marvel Films have been more than willing to try again with new writers, directors, and stars; Fantastic Four wasn't a critical success, but it made enough money to spawn a sequel; Ang Lee's Hulk was an ambitious letdown, but Marvel handed the property over to Edward Norton for a second chance; and The Punisher is being given another go-round despite two dismal adaptations so far. The one Marvel superhero franchise that hasn't been talked up for a reboot so far has been Daredevil (and its even worse spin-off, Elektra). That's probably because the original -- helmed by a hapless Mark Steven Johnson and starring an out-of-it Ben Affleck -- was such a piece of junk that no one wanted a second try at it.

That may be about to change. 20th Century Fox's co-chair, Tim Rothman, insists that the studio will be pairing with Marvel Films to produce another installment of the adventures of everyone's favorite blind lawyer/costumed vigilante; he's just not saying when. Or who. Or where, how, or perhaps most importantly, why. In a cagey interview with IESB, Rothman says the deed will get done, but fails to name names, and cites a curious precedent: "I think that the thing The Hulk showed...is that it is possible, that if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance." Exactly what was done right about Norton's Hulk reboot and exactly who gave it a second chance is unclear: the movie was tepidly reviewed, and made almost exactly as much money as Ang Lee's famouse 'failure'. But hey, the spirit is willing even if the facts are weak.

While Rothman goes on to namecheck Christopher Nolan and his approach to the Distinguished Competition's Batman franchise as a possible peek at what the tone of the next Daredevil film might be, it's clearly too early to start talking about personnel. Which, in a way, is too bad: if Daredevil's worth doing, it's worth doing right. As we reported in this space a while back, Frank Miller and Jason Statham have both expressed some interest in a Daredevil movie, and one of the hottest action stars of today combined with the man who wrote some of the best Daredevil stories in comic book history could make for an intriguing film. On the other hand, if all Fox intends to do is find the next Mark Steven Johnson -- well, wake us when X-Men 4 is ready.

Related Posts:

Jason Statham: I Dare You

Don't Mess With The Norton

Unwatchable #66: “Jail Bait”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

At last, it’s Ed Wood! For months I’ve been dutifully trudging my way up this list of the 100 worst movies of all time, and somehow made it a third of the way through without encountering a single work by the man celebrated far and wide as the worst filmmaker ever. I suppose that makes sense, in that the most notorious Wood works – the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda – must be lurking near the top of the chart. It so happens that I’d never seen Wood’s second feature, Jail Bait, so this promised to be quite a treat. We’re huge jailbait fans here at the Screengrab…er, in the cinematic sense, that is.

Wood’s work is tough to rank on the Unwatchable scale, just because he’s usually at his most watchable when he’s at his worst. That is, his bizarre mix of enthusiasm and incompetence only soars when he goes completely off the deep end, as in Plan 9 or Bela Lugosi’s infamous “Home? I have no home” monologue from Bride of the Monster. Jail Bait is as shoddily constructed as you’d expect, but the goofy juice doesn’t really get flowing until the last ten minutes or so.

The story concerns handsome young doofus Don Gregor, son of the famed plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor. Instead of lounging around the house and spending his dad’s money, Don has taken to hanging out with low-rent mobster Vic Brady. One night the cops pick Don up for carrying a concealed weapon and his sister Marilyn has to bail him out. (Marilyn is played by Wood’s girlfriend Dolores Fuller, who no doubt worked for free and gives a performance worth every penny.) Marilyn lectures Don that she won’t do so again: “That gun is jail bait!” Wait – the gun is jail bait? Oh, Edward D. Wood, Jr.! I see what you did there! You got me again.

Don doesn’t heed his sister’s warnings – instead, he goes ahead with Vic on a planned robbery and ends up killing a security guard in the process. Vic shoots a witness who survives and can identify both men. The cops (including a pre-Hercules Steve Reeves) go to Dr. Gregor and urge him to convince his son to turn himself in. Before Don can do so, Vic kills him. But how can Vic evade arrest himself? Simple! He’ll blackmail Dr. Gregor into performing plastic surgery on him, promising to return Don alive if the doc gives him a new, unrecognizable face.

Dr. Gregor is prepared to go along with the plan, until he pokes around Vic’s kitchen and finds his son’s corpse standing upright in the pantry. He gives Vic a new face, alright – spoiler alert! – but it’s the face of Don Gregor! The cops arrive on the scene to arrest him for murder, but Vic-with-Don’s-face flees and is gunned down, flopping face-first into the pool.

To be sure, many of the classic Wood virtues are on display here: the cardboard sets, the absurd mix of catatonic and scenery-devouring acting styles, the Sarah Palin dialogue (“I hope I’m happy to know ya.” “South America! The foreign countries! Where we’ll live like kings!”), the 71-minute running time padded out with 26 minutes worth of footage of cars pulling in and out of driveways. There’s even an utterly gratuitous shot of Steve Reeves putting on his shirt, and I haven’t even mentioned the inanely insistent zither score that will probably follow me to the gates of hell. I know it all sounds good, but it mostly plays like a dull episode of a ‘50s cop show. Only the big twist ending, with the unveiling of Vic’s new face (a scene that surely influenced Ed Wood director Tim Burton’s revelation of the Joker’s face in the 1989 Batman) reaches the heights of top-shelf Wood (or the lows of bottom-drawer Wood, depending on how you look at it).

Previously on Unwatchable:
67. Nine Lives
68. Kazaam
69. The Perfect Holiday (pending)
70. Epic Movie
71. Gigli

Dark Knight: The All-Talking-Head Edition

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:45:00 GMT

It seems strange to be talking already about the contents of a Dark Knight DVD already. After all, the movie is still playing in theaters all over the place -- in fact, it's still in the middle of a real barn-burner of a theatrical run, with each week proving that a Spandex-clad Christian Bale still has some legs under him. By the time the last theater in America yanks the latest installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman series in favor of Election Movie or whatever other Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer abomination comes down the pike, it may be the most profitable movie in the history of the world. Still, today's media cycle is shorter than Billy Barty, and it can't be denied that some people were already demanding a Dark Knight DVD release on their way out of the theater after having seen it for the first time.

That's why we're grateful to insider site Blu-Ray.com (via a Spanish DVD fansite, so please do consider the source before writing us angry letters) for some advance info about what we're going to get when we finally plunk down our $30 for the deluxe DVD release of Dark Knight. Neat stuff: it'll be a double disc, with director's commentary, making-of featurettes, production stills, trailers, viral marketing content, gadget stuff, and all the rest. Multiple audio formats will be available, and there'll be plenty of origin-of-a-scene stuff and special effects spotlights for the geek contingent. Especially fun: the release will include six different clips from fictional Gotham City news shows and media broadcasts, treating the events of the film as if they were real stories; this could be setting audiences up for the next movie in the series -- tentatively titled, simply, Gotham -- in which it's rumored we'll see all the action from a citizen's-eye view.

Less neat, though, is the promise that the second disc will contain talking-head featurettes entitled "Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight" and "The World of Batman Seen Through Real Life Psychotherapy". Speaking as someone who has spent entirely too much time thinking about the psychology of Bruce Wayne, take it from me that nothing kills the magic of Batman more than hearing some heartless schmoe talk about how, in real life, he'd be considered a violent psychopath who should probably do a couple of decades punching wax dummies in an asylum. Better still, these features are inexplicably in HD, allowing audiences to see every wrinkle and/or pimple on whatever community college psych teacher they rope in to do the project.

Related Posts:

Why Batman is the New Beatles

Why So Serious? The Dark Knight in the Political World

It’s a Lebowski World, We Just Abide in It

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The Coen Brothers won a heap of Oscars earlier this year, their new movie is due in theaters tomorrow, and yet it’s still pretty much all Lebowski, all the time. The movie has just been released on DVD for the third time. (I’ve got the original bare bones edition purchased by those happy few of us who were in on the ground floor of this thing, but that’s since been supplanted by the 2005 “collector’s edition” and the new 10th anniversary version, which also comes in a specially packaged bowling ball edition.) Lebowski Fest, the celebration of bowling, White Russians and what-have-you that began in Louisville, Kentucky in 2002 has now expanded to multiple locations: the San Francisco edition took place earlier this month and the New York version is set for November.

Since this is an election year, we even have some pontification on the politics of The Big Lebowski. According to this Slate piece, the “Is this your homework, Larry?” sequence “if filmed today, would almost certainly be taken as an allegory about the younger Bush's war. The police have recovered the car, and the Dude has found, wedged between the seats, a page of homework belonging to one Larry Sellers. Walter figures out Larry's address and arrives at his house, the Dude in tow, the homework in a plastic bag… When Larry says nothing, Walter proceeds to Plan B: destroying the new Corvette parked outside—purchased, he assumes, using the money left in the car—with a crowbar. Actually, though, the Corvette belongs to a neighbor. Neocons everywhere can sympathize.”

Rolling Stone attempts to get to the bottom of Lebowski-mania with a cornucopia of 10th anniversary articles and interviews. “Today, as technology increasingly handcuffs us to schedules and appointments — in the time it takes you to read this, you've missed three e-mails — there's something comforting about a fortysomething character who will blow an evening lying in the bathtub, getting high and listening to an audiotape of whale songs. He's not a 21st-century man. Nor is he Iron Man — and he's certainly not Batman. The Dude doesn't care about a job, a salary, a 401(k), and definitely not an iPhone. The Dude just is, and he's happy.” Or as John Milius, one model for Walter Sobchak puts it, “The Dude is like Dirty Harry…Dirty Harry became a movement. And the Dude became a movement. It's symbolic of a whole way of life.” Well, at least it’s an ethos.

And remember, this is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps:

Related:
The Dude Abides: Ten Years of "Lebowski"
"Almost an Evening" with Ethan Coen

Cartoon Fever: The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (1965)

There's been plenty of fine animated entertainment on television over the years (Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill, The Grinch What Stole Christmas, Davey & Goliath, etc.), though for our purposes here today (and with the exception of shorts that later became TV staples, like "Duck Amuck"), this list mainly celebrates more festival-friendly fare. And yet, a celebration of classic cartoons without A Charlie Brown Christmas just seems downright un-American somehow, considering how deeply the characters, dialogue, plot and Vince Guaraldi score have embedded themselves in our collective national sense of childhood and the holiday spirit...though not deep enough, sadly, to shift the overall landscape of "family-friendly" animation from blaring, consumerist junk food to the quiet, thoughtful humanity of writer Charles Schulz and director Bill Meléndez's depiction of what even the most cynical among us would have to admit ain't such a bad little tree.

LUPO THE BUTCHER (1987)

In the last twenty years or so, gross-out cartoons have become a staple of animation festivals. With Lupo the Butcher, Danny Antonucci managed to get in on the ground floor of what would quickly become a growth industry and a played-out sub-genre. Antonucci has said that Lupo's bloody slapstick and cussword-plastered soundtrack were powered by his own career frustrations: he made the film over the course of a couple of years while supporting himself by working on shitty children's animation. Lupo is a creature of pure, self-destructive rage, a nightmare image of man's inability to use his anger to do anything but drive himself further into the ground like a tent spike. The world being what it is, the character was quickly licensed to appear in commercials for Converse shoes and MTV bumpers. Antonucci went on to create the Ed, Edd n Eddy series for the Cartoon Network.

MECHANICAL MONSTERS (1941)

Superheroes do go back a ways in the movies. The series of Superman cartoons produced by the Fleischer brothers and directed by Dave Fleischer remain little pieces of pop art gold, with a clean, stripped-down graphic style that was an obvious influence on the superb work done on Batman: The Animated Series and its Superman and Justice League spin-offs. There have been other good superhero movies since, but these remain the template.

MINNIE THE MOOCHER (1932)

This constantly morphing, surreal, spooky short spotlights the Fleischer brothers' goofball side as flamboyantly as anything they ever did. It also brings together, for the first time, their two great totemic Jazz Age figures: Betty Boop and Cab Calloway. Quick: which one's the cartoon?

MUNRO (1961)

The inspiring story of a four-year-old drafted into this man's army, Munro is a tiny example of how easily perfection can be achieved by just hooking up the right people and turning them loose on the right material. This faithful adaptation of a Jules Feiffer comic strip is the best movie work by the illustrator-animator Gene Deitch, today perhaps best remembered as the father of underground-comics legend Kim Deitch, and his sometime collaborator, Simon Deitch. Also holding his end up: Your Show of Shows alum Howard Morris, whose voice-over work here could have thrown a good scare into Mel Blanc.

RYAN (2004)

Chris Landreth's uncanny masterpiece is a profile of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian hippie animator who had a great success with his 1969 short film Walking but quickly slid into non-productivity and alcoholism. Landreth's film, which incorporates actual tapes of his conversations with the ruined but still mostly affable Larkin (who becomes nasty only when he thinks that Landreth is suggesting that he stop drinking and pull himself together), is a layered, sympathetic portrait of someone Landreth clearly admires for his talent and at the same a troubling act of self-criticism from an artist who isn't sure that he isn't exploiting another human being. It's also a stunning demonstration of how much the animator's art can matter.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three & Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Hollywood Welcomes Virgin

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The comics racket is a tough one -- or, as Variety puts it in a bizarre moment of Coen-channeling when discussing Virgin's entry into the field a few years back, it is "a rocky place where their seeds could find no purchase". (Comics2Film adds the unwelcome phrasing that the company was "inseminated with funds from Richard Branson's media empire". Those guys really need to get out more.) After several largely fruitless years of attempting to steal market share away from the bigwigs at Marvel and DC -- and signing a deal with ex-Marvel boss Stan Lee to develop a line of properties for them that went nowhere -- Virgin Comics has finally realized what everyone else in the business already knows: that the real money in comics doesn't come from the books themselves, but from farming out their characters as properties to be used in Hollywood blockbusters. In aid of this, they're shuttering their New York office and moving the whole operation to L.A.

Branson insists that the comics wing isn't shutting down, it's simply reorganizing as a development company; but that's just typical business boilderplate. What should truly concern us here are the various bits of trivia concealed deep within the article, where the author clearly hoped we would not notice them: the fact that Virgin's "Hollywood development deals" for their characters are almost all slotted for release on the Sci-Fi Channel as opposed to an actual movie theatre, and feature such blockbuster properties as "Guy Ritchie's The Gamekeeper" and "Ed Burns' Dock Walloper"; the fact that, despite deals being inked all over town, not a single Virgin Comics film or TV production has actually been made; and the boffo news that Branson's partner in the venture is Deepak Chopra's son Gotham -- as in Gotham City, home of the Batman -- which likely explains the commonly cited reason for the comics line's failure, that it focuses on stories involving relatively obscure Indian mythology.

Still, the company has some real talent signed, from well-liked comics writer Mike Carey to porn star Jenna Jameson to Stan the Man himself. Time will tell if Virgin Comics can develop any of those signings into decent movies and/or TV shows, but this morning, Branson has to be wishing the entire venture didn't sound so much like a bad nepotistic joke in an inside-Hollywood parody.

Jolie to Porn Star: "Do It"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Although Heath Ledger hasn't officially announced that he won't be returning to the role of the Joker, we're guessing that in this case, silence gives assent. And with the question of whether or not there will be a new Batman movie easily answered by a quick peek at its gargantuan box-office numbers, speculation is beginning to turn to who will play the villain in the next installment.

Amongst the hottest rumors, despite an official denial by franchise hack David S. Goyer, are that Johnny Depp will step into the franchise as the Riddler, or that Philip Seymour Hoffman will take on the role of the Penguin. Those are perfectly acceptable choices, classic Batman villains assayed by two of our most accomplished actors. But in terms of sheer, white-hot, skin-tight buzz generation, they can't hold a candle to our favorite rumor, which is that Angelina Jolie will be playing Catwoman.

Having secured the "blessing" of beloved TV Catwoman Julie Newmar -- who has about as much say in the matter as I do -- to take on the role, Jolie, according to the highly respectable sources at the New York Post's Page Six, has begun consulting her "gal pal", porn star (and, apparently, hardcore Catwoman fan) Tera Patrick about how she should play the role. Frankly, there's not much more to it than putting on a tight-fitting costume, flitting about seductively, and purring at Batman, but if Angelina wants to cozy up with the star of Filthy Fuckers #194: Suck My Handle, who are we to argue?

According to the Post, "Tera had such insights into the role that Jolie cracked, 'You should do it!'" The Screengrab fully supports this casting decision.