The Screengrab : borat

Screengrab Predicts Summer 2009: The Toss-Ups (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

So, now that you’ve seen our consensus picks for the Top 5 Hits & the Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2009, here are the films that we didn’t know quite what to do with...

Andrew:

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (August 21)

This one hits theaters closer to Labor Day (and the start of the “quality” awards-bait season) than Memorial Day -- assuming QT actually finishes his grindhouse WW2 epic on time -- and the theaters it hits will probably be art houses rather than multiplexes, where nobody will be expecting the confusingly titled Basterds to rack up Pulp Fiction-esque "national sensation" numbers...but Tarantino’s latest seems like quite the odd duck nonetheless, with a promised ultra-violence sensibility that may have trouble finding its artsy splatter audience even WITH all the ass-kicking Jews and Brad Pitt’s funny southern accent.

BRÜNO (June 10)

Oh, sure...Borat was a national sensation, and the annoying guy in your office still says, “Niiice!” on a daily basis. But I’m guessing it was a lot easier for most Americans to feel “in” on the joke when Sacha Baron Cohen was making fun of them funny furriners than it will be to laugh at their own homophobic prejudices or their own knee-jerk PC responses to the heterosexual Cohen’s flouncing, mincing gay character. But then again, you know what they say about that whole “no such thing as bad publicity” thing...

Nick:

1) Public Enemies, because Michael Mann has yet to make an out-and-out summer blockbuster.

2) UP, because eagerness for Pixar’s latest has been especially muted.

3) Angels & Demons, because The Da Vinci Code craze seems to have subsided.

4) Julie & Julia, because its August release date implies that the studio thinks it has more limited appeal than Meryl Streep’s The Devil Wears Prada or Mamma Mia!

5) The Ugly Truth, because even though it’s the summer’s chief rom-com, it’s hard to imagine Katherine Heigl continuing to be a serious box-office draw.

Paul:

Drag Me to Hell- Sam Raimi fans are pumped for his return to horror, but will anyone else care? Will this be the film that finally lifts the box-office curse on summer horror movies?

Terminator Salvation- is there life for Terminator after Arnold? Will people pay to see the movie when they can just as easily watch the Terminator TV series at home? And can Christian Bale still reel in audiences now that his profanity-filled tirade has been heard by millions?

The Taking of Pelham 123- in a summer full of epic effects-driven movies, can audiences be bothered with an old-school hostage-negotiation thriller? And will MGM release a super-sweet new DVD edition of the original film just in time for the remake? Because they really should.

Year One- will a high-concept caveman comedy, even one starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, play in this age of improvisational laffers? And will there be zug-zug like in Caveman?

Public Enemies- is Johnny Depp really the box office draw Hollywood thinks he is after the Pirates trilogy? Can Michael Mann become bankable again after the subpar returns for Miami Vice? And in this era of Grand Theft Auto, will ticket buyers get excited for a fedoras-and-tommy-guns gangster shoot’em’up?

Bruno- can the least funny character from Da Ali G Show actually carry a film? Will people flock to laugh at the strange misadventures of a flamingly gay Austrian, or will they be scared off by the homosexuality factor?

Bandslam- is Vanessa Anne Hudgens still a draw even when she isn’t starring in High School Musicals? Will tween-friendly fare still do solid box office even during the summer movie season?

Taking Woodstock- is the August 14 release date occasioned by the 40th anniversary of Woodstock simply a symbolic gesture, or will nostalgia for the Summer of Love turn this into an unexpected late-summer hit?

Click Here For The Hits (Parts One & Two), The Bombs (Part Three) and The Honorable Mentions (Parts Five & Six)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Paul Clark

Morning Deal Report: Jackie Earle Haley's Nightmare

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

He’ll always be Kelly Leak to some of us, but in his recent comeback phase, Jackie Earle Haley has played a child molester, a violent vigilante and now…a violent child killer. And he seemed like such a nice boy. Haley will indeed assume the mantle of Freddy Krueger in a new remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. I think every Wes Craven movie has now been remade, except that one with Meryl Streep playing the violin. “Looking at his performance in Watchmen, here’s a guy playing a character under a mask yet you feel tremendous empathy for him,” director Samuel Bayer told The Hollywood Reporter. “And in Nightmare, he is going to be under prosthetic make-up. You have to feel something for the character. The greatest villains are multi-dimensional and I think he will bring that to the character.”

“Larry Charles is set to take on geriatric sex in his next project,” Variety tells me before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee. Thanks, Variety! “The Borat director is in final negotiations to helm Columbia Pictures comedy Winter's Discontent, which centers on a sexually frustrated widower who moves into a retirement community with his best buddy -- looking to get laid.”

More yelling for Al Pacino! Pacino will play Napoleon! It’s “a screen adaptation of Staton Rabin's children's book Betsy and the Emperor”! You child!

Related:
Freddy and the Furious Go to Cloverfield
Pacino Finds New Role Involving Lots of Yelling

Trailer Review: Brüno (Red-band)

Paul Clark — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

I believe that Sacha Baron Cohen may be the most talented comic currently working, and that his performance three years ago in Borat is one of my favorite performances of the decade. Which makes this red-band trailer for Baron Cohen’s latest, Brüno, doubly disappointing- despite all the outrageousness on display, I didn’t laugh once the first time I watched it, and just to be sure I wasn’t just in a bad mood, I watched it again the next day, again without a laugh. Of course, it doesn’t help Brüno may be the least funny of the regular characters from Da Ali G Show. Say what you will about Borat being a caricature, but what really sold the character was less the strange situations he got himself into than his seeming over-eagerness to please in spite of it all. Brüno, on the other hand, is mostly just a mincing stereotype who tries to make people uncomfortable with his unmistakable gayness- which is fine, but the joke only goes so far, and I fear that Sacha Baron Cohen may have overextended it. Still, I have high hopes for his future cinematic projects- the guy is seriously talented, and even in other people’s projects he makes a big impression (he’s a scream in Talladega Nights). And I have a feeling that if some adventurous filmmaker found the right semi-dramatic role for him, he could knock that out of the park too.

April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

So, the other day, my lovely Polish bride was attending a work function at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, when she looked up and saw a tall, craggy guy dressed in camouflage, surrounded by a gaggle of teenage sons, and suddenly realized she was face-to-face with none other than Bill Ghostbustin’ Ass Murray...

...April Fool!

Oh...no, wait...that actually happened...and, indeed, America’s annual Day of Pranks is blessedly over for another year...yet considering we already kicked off the month with a salute to fools, and considering Entertainment Weekly just ran a big, page-wasting spread on the Greatest Heroes and Villains of All Time, your pals here at the Screengrab figured now would be as good a time as any to salute our real heroes...the Comic Relief.

Now, of course, the second we started compiling this list, we realized we’d undoubtedly forget at least two worthy choices for every name we picked...so feel free to remind us who we missed down below in the Comments section, and mayhaps we’ll run a Reader’s Choice list of faves at some future date. But in the meantime, please to enjoy our picks for THE 35 FUNNIEST MOVIE CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME!

DANNY KAYE AS HUBERT HAWKINS IN THE COURT JESTER (1955)

Most people know that comedy isn’t pretty, but it need not necessarily be mean. Consider the career of Danny Kaye -- in his heyday, one of the biggest draws in Hollywood, not only because he was funny but also because he was so darn likable. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in his most enduring movie, The Court Jester -- a film so benignly hilarious that it’s equally enjoyable for children and cinephiles. Taking his cue from the Technicolor swashbucklers of yore, Kaye throws himself into the role of the hapless resistance fighter-turned-jester with a childlike glee, even during the Errol Flynn-esque sword fights. But he’s at his best when engaging in his trademark wordplay. Who can forget the famous "pellet with the poison" exchange? Even better is the extended "Maladjusted Jester" number, in which Kaye, playing a hapless carnival performer-turned-freedom fighter masquerading as the "king of jesters and jester of kings" (long story), gets his chance to entertain the court. The story is put on hold while Kaye sings, dances, and jokes -- a risky move, because if the scene doesn’t work, the movie has nothing to do but stand… "and stand… and staaaaaaaaand…" Thankfully, it’s brilliant, thanks primarily to Kaye’s formidable talents and, it must be said, his innate likability. It’s this latter quality that makes the film work even today: at plenty of times during the film, Hubert has the option of resorting to violence or devious tactics, but that would be out of character for Kaye, so he must come up with more creative (and humorous) alternatives. It’s rare to find a movie that’ll make one smile throughout even between the laughs, but The Court Jester fits the bill perfectly. (PC)

PETER SELLERS AS INSPECTOR JACQUES CLOUSEAU IN A SHOT IN THE DARK (1964)

Every year, the legend of the Pink Panther films gets a little more tarnished. The endless remakes and reboots, the franchise sequels Steve Martin cranks out when he wants to restock his wine cellar, and the fact that they were never great pieces of cinema in the first place all conspire to rob the original Blake Edwards films of their magic, year after year. But lest we forget, the Pink Panther movies, as poorly as they have aged, were a showcase for the comedic talents of Peter Sellers, and in this film – the best of the series by a mile – it’s easy to see why he was once considered the funniest man in the world. What’s made the Clouseau character last is that Sellers made him a vehicle for so many types of comedy: gross physical slapstick, outrageous (for the time) sexual gags, wordplay, linguistic tomfoolery, broad ethnic comedy, improvisational brilliance, and even the odd subtle character moment. No comedian alive at the time could so deftly blend all those elements into a single character, and no one has been able to do it since, which is why the latter-day films, even starring as they do a once-gifted comic like Martin, are such a travesty. As if all that’s not enough, consider that Sellers made A Shot in the Dark in the same year that he did Dr. Strangelove! That’s a one-two punch that proves that there was literally no type of comedy he couldn’t make completely his own. (LP)

JOHN BELUSHI AS BLUTO IN ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)

Some might say "Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go through life." Happily others beg to differ. The loose cannon and gross-out pre-med under-acheiver John "Bluto" Blutarski is John Belushi at his slovenly best. He's that guy you kind of hate for being obtuse, but love for providing a breath of fresh air in pretentious situations like college, work and life. Bluto is the dispenser of such pearls of wisdom as "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily." Also, who can forget the crashing apart of the black & white reconciliation float in the homecoming parade? There would be no Animal House without Belushi's cherubic moron with a heart of gold (and stand-up ethics). (SCS)

ALYSON HANNIGAN AS MICHELLE FLAHERTY IN AMERICAN PIE (1999)

Hannigan, had already spent two years using Buffy the Vampire Slayer as her delivery system for the message that sexy dorks rule the universe, before jumping at the chance to really put that idea across here. Popping her words like gum and making "Like you have a shot at anyone else!" sound like a siren's love lyric, she instantly created a generation of men who will die empty and unfulfilled if they never meet a friendly-seeming bookish geek who's just biding her time until the moment is right to slap them across the face and scream, "Say my name, bitch!" Her absence from movies since then, except for an American Pie sequel or three and the even sorrier Date Movie, has been a real sore spot for some of us, made no easier to take by the possibility it raises that she might just be too happy at home with that wimp bastard she married to be seeking out work. Out of respect for her personal happiness, some of us have refrained from attempting to murder her spouse, even though we suspect that she'd look adorable in black. Enjoy motherhood, sugar britches. (PN)

SACHA BARON COHEN AS BORAT IN BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN (2006)

Overexposed? Sure. Mimicked to death? Definitely. Still one of the decade’s most iconic and consistently hilarious lunatics? Without question. Sasha Baron Cohen’s Kazakhstani journalist made his stateside debut on HBO’s Da Ali G Show in 2003 but came to national prominence with Larry Cohen’s 2006 hit, in which he traveled across America “learning” about the country while searching for his dream girl, Pamela Anderson. Posing as the inappropriate Borat amidst real people supposedly not in on the joke, Cohen pokes, prods and enrages citizens in an attempt to reveal something humorously honest about their patience, prejudices and standards of propriety. The social critique provided by Borat’s discomfiting gags, however, never takes precedence over the outrageous hilarity of his scenarios. Whether convincing an all-too-willing group of Southern bar patrons to sing along to “Throw the Jew Down the Well” on HBO, or engaging in a nude hotel wrestling match with his obese sidekick Azamat (Ken Davitian) in Borat, Cohen’s faux-reporter is a preeminent absurdist prankster whose comedy is best summed up by his own catchphrase: Is Nice!

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

Breaking “Bruno”: Sacha Baron Cohen Faces NC-17 Hurdle

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:30:00 GMT

One of the special SXSW screenings I passed on earlier this month was the sneak peek at approximately 20 minutes worth of footage from Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to Borat, Bruno. It just seemed like one of those things that would end up being a bigger hassle than it was worth, and I felt confident I could wait until July to see the whole thing. That may not be as easy as it once seemed, as the film has just been saddled with the MPAA’s dreaded NC-17 rating “because of numerous sexual scenes that the ratings board considers over the line.”

Anyone who saw Borat – I’m specifically thinking of the scene in which Cohen and obese, hairy co-star Ken Davitian rassle face-to-junk in the nude – has to be wondering how Bruno could possibly be so much more offensive as to warrant the NC-17 rating, which tends to limit the number of theaters that will agree to screen the movie as well as the number of outlets willing to advertise it. And of course, all hardcore fans of Cohen and his characters have to be chortling with glee in anticipation of whatever it is he’s done to raise the MPAA’s hackles.

Entertainment Weekly correspondent Karen Valby did attend the SXSW sneak preview, and offers her own take on the three scenes screened, including this one: “Bruno arrives in a ‘ghastly s---hole called Texas.’ (The fellow Texans in my audience gave this line a round of applause. What's wrong with us?) Bruno appears on a crap daytime talk show called Today With Richard Bey, appealing to a largely African American audience. He swans onto the stage for a segment devoted to single parents, blabbing about how his adopted African baby boy is a ‘dick magnet’ and that he traded his iPod for the kid. The audience wanted his hide. Then a gleeful producer wheels out a gorgeous little black baby boy wearing a ‘Gayby’ T-shirt and leather pants. Bruno declares that he's named his son O.J. -- child protective services intervenes.”

Of course, there’s always the strong possibility that Cohen submitted a version of the film containing over-the-top material he never intended to include (until the release of inevitable unrated DVD, of course), simply so he could trim it from the offending cut and resubmit the version he intended all along. The MPAA would then think they’d done their job and reward Bruno with the R rating that will allow the core teenage audience to enjoy Cohen’s antics over and over again. “For the moment, Baron Cohen is doubtless playing the uncompromising artist,” Richard Corliss writes in Time, “insisting that every frame of his film be shown as is; and Universal, I'd guess, is exerting its muscle both on the MPAA to approve a version with some shock value and on their star-auteur to throw the board a few boners and get the damn R. Baron Cohen shoots a lot of footage in his docu-comedies, and, the studio spokesman told Waxman, ‘With the quantity of material available, I cannot foresee a problem. It's not even April and the film comes out July 10 so it's nonsense to say there's a struggle of any kind.’”

Screengrab Flashback, 1987: Crispin Glover, Kicking Against the Prick

Phil Nugent — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

As our heroic Oscar show live-bloggers pointed out, the Academy Awards broadcast did clear up one pressing question: more than a week after Joaquin Phoenix's bizarre, bearded appearance on the David Letterman show, it's still open season on the actor turned rapper. This is kind of s shame, if only because James Wolcott seems to have been proven right in his speculation that all the slack-jawed fascination Phoenix inspired in his few minutes on Dave's couch has come at the price of a lack of serious attention and box office for the movie he was ostensibly promoting, Two Lovers, his latest collaboration with writer-director James Gray. Still unanswered, though, is the question of whether Phoenix is genuinely flaking out publicly (or worse), or if, as has been suggested, he's engaged in some Andy Kaufman-style prank or long-term Borat-type project. Though for some of us watching, the appearance summoned up not thoughts of either Sacha Baron Cohen or Latka's creator but Crispin Glover. If that's the role model that Phoenix meant to invoke, he's a rare bird indeed.

Glover's turn in the spotlight came in the summer of 1987, when he was supposed to be promoting Tim Hunter's River's Edge, the tragic-teen melodrama in which he had his biggest movie role to date. (Up to that time, he was best known for having played Michael J. Fox's father in Back to the Future.) Glover's freakish, hand-waving performance in River's Edge garnered mixed reviews at best, and it helped create a climate in which the still relatively little-known actor was widely perceived as something of an oddball. Even so, his Letterman appearance exceeded even the most baroque expectations. Acting as if he were about to keel over from anthrax, Glover boogied out onstage in thrift-shop clothing, platform shoes, and a fright wig, and began to frantically stammer about how the jackals in the media were writing about him as if he were some kind of weirdo. Apparently incited to demonstrate what a normal fellow he was by some girls in the audience who called out, "Nice shoes!", Glover made a muscle, invited his host to arm wrestle, then leaped up to demonstrate his ability to kick as high as the seated Letterman's head. He did in fact, kick very close to Letterman's head, which seemed to be the cue Dave was looking for to announce that their revels now were ended.

In those pre-Internet days, word of what had gone down spread rapidly across college campuses, in some cases with VCR-recorded evidence that was disseminated with what we used to call "tape trees." (And I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.) Word was slow to get out that Glover was playing a character, Rubin, who would eventually be the focus of a barely seen feature film, 1991's Rubin and Ed, co-starring Howard Hessman and directed by Trent Harris (The Beaver Trilogy). This explanation fails to explain how Glover thought anyone not privy to this information could have been expected to watch him unravel with anything other than open-mouthed bewilderment, or why he thought that the notoriously crankly control freak Letterman would be delighted to watch him melt down on his time and feel the draft from his oversized clodhoppers tickle the side of his face.

Coupled with his work in River's Edge, the Letterman show appearance cemented the direction of Glover's acting career, which is to say that it officially redefined him as an unvarying token of sheer weirdness. (His subsequent failure to appear in the sequel to Back to the Future, which he followed up by suing the filmmakers for violating his "image" by having the actor who replaced him made up to resemble him, also earned him the reputation of a weirdo who was hard to deal with.) By the time of his cameo in Wild at Heart, Glover was seen as the sort of person David Lynch shoehorns into a movie if he's afraid that it might not be strange enough. Although Glover's few opportunities to play a relatively normal person, in mostly small roles in such films as John Boorman's Where the Heart Is and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? have shown him to be a capable actor with a surprisingly sweet screen presence, his biggest roles and ripest paydays have been for flaunting his geek-show side in such films as Charlie's Angels, Bartleby, and Willard. (More recently, he reunited with the director of Back to the Future, Robert Zemeckis, to incarnate the title role in Beowulf.) A well-established young actor with a string of successes to his credit, Phoenix will not be so easily pigeonholed. At this point, most people would be relieved to hear that he's having a laugh, even if he did throw a labor of love movie under the bus in the procession, and after a shave, the industry would welcome him back with welcome if wary arms. But is he kidding? It's a dubious sort of joke that serves to turn you into a punchline for Ben Stiller's use. Stay tuned.

Strangers In A Strange Land: Screengrab’s Favorite Fish-Out-Of-Water Stories (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:30:00 GMT

THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1984)

Like many new arrivals to New York City, Joe Morton’s character in John Sayles’ indie comedy is hoping for a fresh start in the strange, scary but not entirely hostile metropolis. The big difference, of course, is that Morton’s innocent mute is a three-toed extraterrestrial, an escaped slave from "another planet" being pursued by two vaguely feline (and white) Men In Black (who, ironically, are far more concerned with the number of toes on their quarry’s feet than the color of his skin). Sayles’ gentle parable of multicultural integration features a magic trick (in the scene above) that hinges on a still-timely sociological sight gag about urban race relations. Yet it’s interesting to ponder what the eponymous Brother would think if he made a return visit to our planet today: with the Disney-fication of Times Square and the ongoing gentrification of Harlem (not to mention the upcoming Obama inauguration), even the human characters from Sayles’ early ‘80s world might feel a bit disoriented in the strange land of 2008 Manhattan.

UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984)

Malcolm Lowry's novel of self-destruction is a force of nature. John Huston's film of the novel is, sadly, not. Sure, it contains moments of beauty and tragedy, but when things go wrong, they go wrong with a dogged determinism. Albert Finney plays the drunken Geoffrey Firmin, ex-consul of the British Empire in Mexico, with a grace rarely afforded cinematic alcoholics. The other actors are, sadly, not up to his standards (Huston's adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood has the same problem, as leading man Brad Dourif's talents far outshine all other actors onscreen, save Harry Dean Stanton.) As Firmin stumbles further out of the relative safety of his regular haunts, Mexico becomes less like an exotic extension of his home and more like a seedy extension of the jungle, where Firmin's haughty imperialism will lead to a swift downfall.

BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN (2006)

Sacha Baron Cohen’s most notorious creation, Borat Sagdiyev, isn’t really a stranger at all. He’s more of an infiltrator. And his America isn’t a strange land, either; in fact, it’s one the British comedian smugly believes he knows like the back of his hand. Whether you loved or hated Borat is largely dependent on how much tolerance you have for Baron Cohen’s assumption that he can easily get to the ugly creamed filling under the sweet exterior of America just by biting it in the right spot; there are those who find his style of humor hysterical and telling, and others who find it manipulative and condescending. But no one can doubt, after seeing it in action, how skillfully he wields it, not to inform, but to eviscerate. Borat is a butcher, not a surgeon, and we’re his meat. His Kazakhstan is funny because he correctly assumes that it’s distant enough from our daily lives that we’ll laugh at his fantastic portrayal of it; and his America is funny because he correctly assumes that we’re so far inside of it that we won’t even realize how he’s making it look until it’s far too late. The archetype of the man trapped in a world not of his own making usually derives its humor from the fact that he’s a holy fool, innocently reflecting our reality in his ignorance; Borat shows how dangerous it can be when the holy fool is really an unholy genius who knows exactly how to take advantage of the fact that people are likely to do anything if they think they’re in the presence of someone who doesn’t know any better.

THE NEW WORLD (2005)

It’s no surprise that Terrence Malick’s name would show up on a list of great movies about culture clashes. Since the beginning of his career, he’s specialized in showing us the beauty and violence that grow out of peoples’ encounters with the strange, whether that strangeness is expressed as the dreary middle of the U.S., the uncontrollable vastness of the new west, or the tempting primitivism of the South Pacific in wartime. What’s shocking about The New World is that he manages to pull the same trick twice in one movie – and both times with spectacular results. Filming in modern-day Virginia, his conjuration of the lands that greeted John Smith’s men is so perfect, so unspoiled, so bountiful that it’s almost terrifying. His men were promised heaven, and to see it in this life fills them with an almost religious dread. But this quickly fades: if heaven is on earth, what need have they for law? The settlement soon devolves into a stunted, filthy savagery that stands in marked contrast to the gorgeous plenty of the New World. It’s all done with some of the most breathtaking camera work ever seen, but then the movie takes an astonishing shift – one that, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, would have shattered the tone of the film. We see England through Pocahontas’ eyes as no less strange and unreal a place than was America in John Smith’s eyes, a place of man without nature, of infinite variations of gray and wet, and it has no less devastating an effect on her life.

MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON (1984)

Made at pretty much the exact last moment that Robin Williams was capable of doing anything likable, Paul Mazursky’s charming Moscow on the Hudson now seems like a relic of an ancient age, but it should be remembered that it came out at a time when the only cinematic method of interacting with the Soviet Union was with hails of gunfire and exploding rocket-bombs. Mazursky’s story of a simple and kind Russian musician who decides to defect during a state visit to New York had its bittersweet moments, as Williams’ Vladimir Ivanoff discovered that life in America is not all smiles and sunshine even for those who have the rare opportunity to have sex with Maria Conchita Alonso. But it also managed to convey the belief, greatly underrepresented in theaters at the time, that Russians were actual human beings who might not deserve to be shot in the face; and it also suggested the possibility – which, as it happened, turned out to be disturbingly correct – that the best way to get the Commies on our good side was just to let them take a gander at a well-cut pair of blue jeans and a fully stocked shelf at the supermarket. Many of Moscow on the Hudson’s land-of-plenty/land-of-want scenes are cliché by this point, but at the time, they seemed fresh and earnest enough to work.

WOODY ALLEN IN GENERAL: PARTICULARLY SLEEPER (1973), BANANAS (1971) & ZELIG (1983)

I used to think of Woody Allen as an explorer of the well-known. He endlessly treads around his own expensively analyzed psyche to tell new truths about self-absorbed Manhattan professionals. Strange then, to realize that much of his early work deals with outsiders who are unable to cope with their surroundings, then suddenly find themselves in even more alien circumstances. In Sleeper he is cryogenically frozen, then thawed in a strangely familiar future where pot-smoking has been replaced by fondling an orb and sex by the Orgasmatron machine. In Bananas he's a hapless doofus who has no particular luck with the ladies. That is, not until he finds himself at the center of guerilla action in a small Central American country in a permanent state of coups and revolutions: an innocent abroad if there ever was one. Then there's Broadway Danny Rose, where Allen stars as a man who lives his entire life somewhat out of his element. (His buddies at the Carnegie Deli suggest a Danny Rose sandwich would be a bagel with Marinara sauce). In Annie Hall he is Alvy Singer, who is perpetually on guard against his familiar New York surroundings turning strange on him. Whenever he ventures outside of New York his suspicion that he is an alien in his own country are confirmed. He cannot function in L.A. and when he visits Annie's family in Wisconsin, he finds himself transformed to a Hassidic Jew. Finally, of course, there is Zelig, the story of the eternal chameleon, never at home, and always adaptable.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Screengrab Live Blogs The Golden Globes

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:39:00 GMT

(All times TiVo approximate)

7:33 - Nice silly bow tie, Brad.

7:35 - Way to step on your annoying daughter’s dress, Billy Ray.

7:38 - Good Lord! Marisa Tomei is wearing the puffy shirt! Is her next movie The Pirates of Penzance?

7:41 - Brangelina blow off Ryan Seacrest...heh-heh-heh...

7:46 - My lovely Polish bride Amy acquaints me with the Golden Globes dinner menu:

APPETIZERS
California organic field green salad with white asparagus
Crisp apricot dill goat cheese in phylo and poached pear
Maple syrup apple cider vinaigrette

ENTREES
Grilled prime tenderloin of beef with green tea pearl and sautéed aromatic Asian spice marinated sea bass
Sherry wine yuzu pepper sauce
Grilled king oyster mushroom
Jicama, Romanesco and potato onion croquette

DESSERT
Golden chocolate Globe with organic yogurt pistachio mousse

7:49 - The E! Channel breaks out their "Star Tracker" technology, wherein video arrows point out the stars to us in wide shots of the red carpet. Note to E! - Just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.

7:50 - Jeremy Piven appears on the red carpet. Apparently his mercury levels have returned to normal. Thank you, baby Jesus!

7:53 - Amy is sick of all the sand colored couture. Her favorite gowns of the evening: Drew Barrymore and Christina Applegate. Me, I could eat me some Anne Hathaway with a spoon.

8:02 - Amy thinks J. Lo is wearing one of Cher's Bob Mackie gowns from a 1970s time machine.

8:04 - Okay, I haven't seen The Reader and I love Kate Winslet, but...really? Best Supporting Actress? She must give really good Nazi.

8:06 - Damn, that Kate Winslet is adorable. Meanwhile...um...is Sting in that production of Pirates of Penzance with Marisa Tomei?

8:10 - BROOOOOOOOOOCCCEE!!!!!

8:11 - I'm trying to figure out who or what Darren Aronofsky looks like in his funny weaselly moustache. A villain in a Preston Sturges film? The Guy Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta? Meanwhile, Amy thinks Rumer Willis (in the background as a Golden Globes girl) may have had her chin shaved, since her big square potato head is no longer quite as prominent and she actually looks kinda cute. From a distance.

8:13 - Robert Downey Jr. apparently stuck his toe in the same electrical outlet as Drew Barrymore.

8:18 - Tom Wilkinson has apparently been drinking since noon.

8:20 - Hooray for Laura Dern! Amy's happy she kept her original nose, and I'm happy David Lynch used his mysterious powers of transcendental meditation to help her win.

8:25 - What happened to Don Cheadle's hair?

8:27 - Amy does not care about Eva Mendes. Even if she is a proud Cuban-American. (But we both love whoever that guy was she introduced...I missed what he said because I was Googling Eva Mendes and found this great shot of her plumber's crack while Amy drools over Hamm, John Hamm:

8:31 - Both my mother and Amy's mother call to express outrage over Hamm getting robbed. Amy dubs it Hammgate.

8:36 - Ricky Gervais = hilarious. Tells Kate Winslet, "See? I told you...do a Holocaust movie and you'll win awards!"

8:39 - The hobbits from the Fellowship of the Ring...sorry, I mean, the Jonas Brothers, present the award for Best Foregone Conclusion...I mean, uh, Best Animated Feature. Amy says the middle Jonas Brother looks like the guy she lost her virginity to (although I saw the guy recently and he no longer has that silky Jonas hair...or any hair, really).

8:41 - Amy wants Johnny Depp, meanwhile, to simply wash his hair.

8:43 - Sally Hawkins wins Best Actress for Comedy! I couldn't be happier! Amy is also happy for Sally, but wants to feed her skinny ass some brie.

8:45 - Sally Hawkins is full of love. And, possibly, nitrous oxide.

8:54 - Cheadle: good bald. Ralph Fiennes: not so much. (Amy, meanwhile, loves loves loves Drew Barrymore's dress.)

8:58 - Ledger wins. Universal sadness.

9:03 - Meanwhile, over on CNN, they're interviewing Priscilla Presley, who apparently got some cut-rate plastic surgery that left her looking like a Dick Tracy villain.

9:07 - Colin Farrell has that weird Aronofsky moustache, too! Trend alert!

9:10 - Waltz With Bashir guy: best acceptance speech of the evening.

9:11 - Maggie Gyllenhaal wears my aunt's drapes. Shirley Maclaine is either stoned or just got hit in the face with a frying pan.

9:13 - Paul Giamatti, for some reason, decided to come dressed as Judah Friedlander.

9:18 - Mmm! Look at that sexy Seth Rogen! Amy prefers fat Seth. Either way, Mickey Rourke is probably gonna kick his ass for that coke-snorting joke.

9:21 - What did David Duchovny mouth to the camera while blowing a kiss? Amy's guess: "I love hookers."

9:23 - Alec Baldwin thanks his vile pig of a daughter. Awwww.

9:31 - Giamatti!

9:36 - I don't have any little snarky comment to make, but I must just pause here to acknowledge the comic brilliance of Tracy Morgan, edging past the Waltz With Bashir guy for best speech. (Lorny Mikes!)

9:41 - Didn't mention it at the time, but controversy breaks out here in Somerville over Glenn Close's outfit. Amy says age-appropriate. Her mother, phoning in from New Hampshire, says early '80s Boca Raton.

9:43 - "Mmm...Pierce Brosnan," quoth Amy. "Nothin' wrong with that." She also likes him because he has a fat wife.

9:46 - P. Diddy and Kate Beckinsale step down off a wedding cake to present a nice Indian man with the award for Best Soundtrack (for Slumdog Millionaire).

9:48 - Nice boobs, Tina Fey!

9:54 - Scorcese!

9:58 - Much whispering about the awe-inspiring wonder of Steven Spielberg and his gift to the art of cinema. Bathroom break!

10:06 - All right, snark aside: (A) Spielberg throws some love to Scorcese, which is nice, but (B) that montage of Spielberg movies reminds you...damn, Steven Spielberg sure made a bunch of good-ass movies. (And, y'know, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). This speech sure is going on, though.

10:09 - Spielberg: still talking.

10:13 - Is it more that Emma Thompson's really big or that Dustin Hoffman's really small?

10:15 - Danny Boyle wins Best Director. Again, the toe-in-electric-outlet hair. Trend alert!

10:19 - Amy says Colin Farrell looks less like a pubic hair with his hair cut short. And I'm happy to see the Bruges love: rent it now! (By the way, I didn't realize when I put In Bruges on my 2008 Top Ten list that the movie's writer/director, Martin McDonagh, is also the playwright responsible for The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the bloodiest play (and one of the most entertaining) I've ever seen on stage. If you get a chance, be sure to check it out!) I have plenty of time to write about all this, incidentally, because Colin Farrell will apparently never stop talking. "You're not Steven Spielberg!" says Amy, who hates him. Me, I thought his speech was kinda sweet.

10:29 - Hayek, Johansson and Cruz all enter my consciousness at once. Amy breaks out the smelling salts.

10:31 - Borat!

10:32 - Really? The Golden Globe audience boos a Madonna joke? Hmm. While I ponder this strange development, Vicky Cristina Barcelona wins best comedy/musical, which makes me think of Salma, Scarlett and Penelope again...mmm...

10:36 - Oh, wait...add Freida Pinto to that fantasy...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

10:39 - Kate Winslet momentarily forgets that Angelina Jolie was also nominated for Best Actress. Angelina Jolie: not happy. Mark Wahlberg says hi to my mother for me.

10:45 - Mad Men? Rules.

10:49 - All the people who wouldn't return Mickey Rourke's calls last year are now very happy for Mickey Rourke.

10:50 - Mickey Rourke thanks David Unger for his balls.

10:52 - Darren Aronofsky flips the bird on national television. "Nice, real nice," says Amy's mother, phoning in from New Hampshire. "John Ford would never do that."

10:54 - Mickey Rourke thanks Scott Franklin for breaking his balls. Somehow Axl Rose was also involved with The Wrestler, making it the New Jersey-est movie of all time. Finally Rourke thanks his dogs. "That's the kinda shit you wait up all night for," says Amy.

10:58 - And...Slumdog! The guy accepting the award jumps the Aronofsky train with a verbal finger flip...trend alert!

Anyway, thanks for playing along at home! And now, to recap...the complete list of winners:

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler (2008)

Best Television Series - Drama

Winner: "Mad Men" (2007)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road (2008)

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Colin Farrell for In Bruges (2008)

Best Director - Motion Picture

Winner: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Tina Fey for "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Original Score - Motion Picture

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - A.R. Rahman

Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Paul Giamatti for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Alec Baldwin for "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - Simon Beaufoy

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Laura Linney for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: Vals Im Bashir (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Winner: Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: "John Adams" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Best Animated Film

Winner: WALL·E (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama

Winner: Anna Paquin for "True Blood" (2007)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Winner: Gabriel Byrne for "In Treatment" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Laura Dern for Recount (2008) (TV)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Tom Wilkinson for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Original Song - Motion Picture

Winner: The Wrestler (2008)("The Wrestler")

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Winner: Kate Winslet for The Reader (2008)

Culture in the Bush Years: A Time of Black Hawks, Battlestars, and Borat

Phil Nugent — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

So Newsweek asked a bunch of folks to select one cultural artifact from the past eight years that "exemplifies what it was like to be alive in the age of George W. Bush." Nobody picked W., thank God--instead, there were votes for a Jeff Koons knickknack ("Much as the Bush administration has waved off an intimacy with Big Oil and professed down-home empathy for regular "folks," Koons likes to pretend that he's not an avatar of irony for billionaire collectors.") and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, the long-in-the-writing novel that dropped weeks before September 11, 2001, and which "conjures up a nation kept awake at night by nameless dread."--but a few movies did slip by the guy at the door. Specifically, Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott's re-staging of the Battle of Mogadishu (based on the nonfiction book by Mark Bowden) and Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's road trip through an America that had just started reconsidering whether this all-hail-the-retarded-boy-king business was really the best defense against national decline.

In this context, they do make for an intriguing double bill. Black Hawk Down, which was made before 9/11 but released some four months later, is about a mission that, at the time, was widely used as Exhibit A by politicians and pundits who wanted to denounce the Clinton administration for its use of military intervention overseas in the name of "nation building." But the movie itself was a hit with many supporters of the Bush administration's plans to spread democracy in the Middle East by kicking ass and taking names. It was also a big success with Somali audiences who turned out in mass numbers to cheer the sight of American soldiers getting blown to pieces. However you want to take the ironies involved, none of these reactions are surprising, nor are the testimonies of soldiers, including those who've been to Iraq, that the movie captures how it feels to be under fire. Scott achieved the movie's visceral effectiveness by eliminating anything that might get in the way of it, including historical and political context and even much in the way of character definition. The movie includes a number of fine actors, but it's all boiled down to the sensory overload of creating how it feels to get shot at, over and over and over, from every direction. So it's no wonder that different audiences would decide who they should be rooting for based on which non-characters look more like them, and also no wonder that the film, which features a predominately white U.S. military, had to endure charges of racism from both Somalis and American writers. For all its technical mastery, the movie goes charging too scarily far in the direction of other Jerry Bruckheimer productions, whose only intent is to make you raise a fist and go, "Whooo!" Five years later, Borat, which was the number one movie in America around the time that the president's party took a battering in the 2006 midterm elections, made that triumphant war whoop sound like a cry for help. It's a candid snapshot of a country that seems populated with people who want to dazzle the world with their indomitable swagger but who reveal the depths of their insecurity with how badly they take being teased. (The movie made headlines while it was in production with stories that Baron Cohen had barely escaped from a Texas rodeo with his life after daring to mangle the National Anthem, and it says a lot that the rodeo organizers seemed, if anything, more eager to brag about how hot-tempered their audience was than the filmmakers.)

Still, a lot of people of a geekish bent will agree with Joshua Alston that no movie released during the war president's time in office quite caught the national mood as well as a small-screen offering, Battlestar Galactica, which Alston hails for presenting "a world that looks nothing like our own, and yet evokes it with chilling accuracy." Alston also scores a direct hit when comparing it to 24, "with its neocon fantasies of terrorists who get chatty if Jack Bauer pokes the right pressure point. Of the two shows, Battlestar has been more honest about the psychological toll of the war on terror. It confronts the thorny issues that crop up in a society's battle to preserve its way of life: the efficacy of torture, the curtailing of personal rights, the meaning of patriotism in a nation under siege. It also doesn't flinch from one question that 24 wouldn't dare raise: is our way of life even worth saving? Plus, the guy who looks like John McCain turned out to be a robot. How's that for prophecy!?

Unwatchable #72: “Meet the Spartans”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:00 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.

Here’s a serendipitous turn of events – not for me, of course, but maybe for somebody out there. On the very day that Disaster Movie, the latest parody from the writing-directing team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, is released in theaters, our Unwatchable selection of the day just happens to be the humor-challenged team’s previous effort, Meet the Spartans. (And when I say effort, I don’t really mean it in any traditional sense of the word.) This is purely coincidental, but if I can do anything to dissuade even one person from spending money on Disaster Movie this weekend, I’ll consider this post a success.

I doubt that’s going to be possible, though, since it seems highly unlikely that any regular Screengrab readers would be seeing Disaster Movie in the first place. For my part, Meet the Spartans was my first experience with the Seltzer-Friedberg team, but I can’t say I was completely unaware of what to expect – basically, that these bozos are Zucker-Abrams-Zucker for people who were often dropped on their heads as children. Spartans is ostensibly a parody of 300, but really just a string of pop culture references linked by scenes of shiny-chested men in leather loinwear. Notice I say pop culture references, not pop culture jokes; Seltzer and Friedberg proved to me that they watch Entertainment Tonight and TMZ, but not that they have any ability to synthesize their crapulent media saturation into something that would make me laugh.

For example: A group of Persians arrive in Sparta to inform King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) that he must submit to the rule of Xerxes. Leonidas proceeds to kick them into the pit of death. He is about to leave when he notices Britney Spears sitting in front of the pit, shaving her head and flashing her pixilized coochie. He then kicks her in the pit of death. Really, it’s not like I’m looking for some explanation for Britney Spears being in ancient Sparta. I realize it’s all part of the free-wheeling zaniness. But you can’t just have her shaving her head and flashing her girl parts. We’ve already seen that. Likewise, when Ryan Seacrest and the American Idol judges appear in front of the pit, it’s not enough that Simon is mean, Paula is loopy and Randy says “dawg” a lot. Maybe that was enough when MAD TV did their very first American Idol send-up 147 years ago, but if you don’t want people to think you’re stupid, untalented assholes, Messrs. Selzer and Friedberg, you really need to step up your game.

Alas, I do think they’re stupid, untalented assholes and I’m just sorry anyone encouraged them as children or even told them they were the “funny guys” in high school. They weren’t, I am almost certain. Here are some things they think are funny: 1) Balls. Now, here they happen to be correct. Balls are funny, particularly when they’re getting punched and they aren’t mine. It’s somewhat less funny when a Happy Feet penguin teabags Leonidas, but again, it’s because there’s no real context. Ball jokes with context – now that’s humor. 2) Homo jokes. Yes, I imagine there is some humor to be mined from the homoeroticism of 300, but the gags here are about as subtle as prison sex. 3) Celebrities and reality TV. In addition to Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan also make appearances to reference their tabloid troubles and flash their digitally obscured vaginas. (All celebrities are impersonated, of course, except for Carmen Electra who seems to be under the impression that she’s acting in the role of Queen Margo.) We not only get the American Idol panel, but the judges from America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars. There’s even a Deal or No Deal reference, which really shows Selzer and Friedberg are invested in crafting timeless comedies for the ages.

The worst thing about these non-jokes is that Selzer and Friedberg feel the need to explain them as they’re happening. So when the fat guy from Borat shows up as Xerxes, the narrator tells us he looks like the fat guy from Borat. And when a symbiotic black Spider-Man costume slithers over Carmen Electra, the narrator tells us it’s much like what happened to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man. An appearance by Rocky Balboa is highlighted by the lingering close-up of the ROCKY stitched on his shorts. It goes on and on. Actually, it just seems like it goes on and on, because, as we learned from this Phil Nugent post and as I can confirm, Meet the Spartans runs for a little over an hour before the end credits begin. After a while, the credits stop and some deleted scenes from the movie are played. I’d really love to know how these particular scenes became the outtakes. The only thing in the whole movie that remotely caused my mouth to twitch in the direction of a smile was Leonidas howling “Tonight! We Dine! AT HOOTERS!” Yet somewhere along the line, a decision was made to remove that scene and show it at the end to pad out the running time. I take back what I said earlier. I think it was Selzer and Friedberg who were repeatedly dropped on their heads as children.

Previously on Unwatchable:
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign
76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance

Morning Deal Report: Dueling Sherlocks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As if Guy Ritchie didn’t have enough problems, what with the gossip sheets running wild with rumors that A-Rod is shtupping his wife. Now it turns out that his Sherlock Holmes feature will face competition from Borat himself. Per Variety, Columbia Pictures has announced “an untitled comedy that will star Sacha Baron Cohen as master detective Sherlock Holmes and Will Ferrell as Watson, his crime-solving partner.” According to Columbia president Matt Tolmach, this re-teaming of the Talladega Nights stars is a sure-fire knee-slapper. "Just the idea of Sacha and Will as Sherlock Holmes and Watson makes us laugh…having them take on these two iconic characters is frankly hilarious." Thank you for speaking frankly, Mr. Tolmach. Of course, this is not the first time rival productions involving the same iconic character have gone head-to-head, as we recall from the great Robin Hood war of the '90s. But then, that was a war nobody won.

The cast of Roland Emmerich’s latest rendition of the end of the world is coming together. Triple threat Thomas McCarthy, who most recently wrote and directed The Visitor, will join John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Danny Glover in Emmerich’s 2012. “As an actor, I've never worked on anything with this scale before, and I always go see these movies,” McCarthy tells the Hollywood Reporter. “This does have a big budget and I do make more money, which is nice, but I know if you take a job like this just for the money, you'll be miserable.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell it to Nicolas Cage.

Meanwhile, the French hit Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks) is being remade not only in America (Will Smith will star for Warner Bros.) but in Italy. Variety describes it as a “heart-warmer about a postal worker forced to relocate to a small town in the north where he can't understand the patois, the food or the many quirks.” We’ll wait for the Portuguese version.

Related:

No Shit, Sherlock: Guy Ritchie Reimagines Holmes
1949 vs. 2012: John Woo/Roland Emmerich Deathmatch!

Oddball Summer Favorites

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

“Summer movie” is one of those phrases like “beach novel” or “toilet wine” that causes an immediate, involuntary adjustment of our expectations. (I was going to say “lowering of expectations,” but we make some mighty tasty toilet wine here at Screengrab headquarters.) When we hear “summer movie,” we think of explosions or aliens or exploding aliens, even though by Hollywood’s calendar, there is no time of year that isn’t appropriate for movies about exploding aliens. But by that same token, there are summer movies that feature hardly any exploding aliens at all. To kick off the season, the New York Times asked several motion picture luminaries to ruminate on their favorite summer movies, with surprising results.

Neil LaBute, who would probably like you to forget he directed the remake of The Wicker Man, selects Dr. Zhivago for what turns out to be a pretty good reason. “The only thing more pleasing, however, than a film that really feels like summer is one that is completely the opposite, but viewed during those blistering months… To sit back at a weekday matinee would be heaven; to see those terrific actors and those amazing locations come to life again, to shudder and actually feel chilled when Yuri and his family walk through the 'ice palace' for the first time. The frost that grows on everything in that scene like an albino moss is such a fresh, beautiful image in Dr. Zhivago.”

Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker has an even more offbeat choice. “Watching Brewster McCloud at a Texas drive-in blew my teenage mind during the summer of ’71. Living on the wrong side of the tracks (the dry part of town) in South Dallas, a late Saturday night could only mean a double or triple bill at the Astro Drive-In. We threw the lawn chairs in the trunk of the car, as well as a teenager or two, and arrived just before dusk to see the main feature… Brewster McCloud was highly anticipated in Texas because it was the first movie made in the Astrodome, that great modern Texas landmark. The trailer also promised some action, some comedy, a little sex and a slam-bang ending. Brewster McCloud had all that, but oh, so much more.”

And then there’s Larry Charles, director of Borat, who brought a date to a Divine movie. Read all about it here.

Bad Nudes Bare: Stars You Didn’t Need to See Naked

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Here's another list for you, and in this case, we can honestly say we're relieved we didn't have to do the research on this one. Courtesy of Papermag, it's Cinemaniac's Top Ten Worst Nude Scenes of All Time. Dennis Dermody speaks for all of us when he writes, "I like Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he's a terrific actor. I've seen him at the neighborhood market and he seems quite pleasant, but I don't want to have that image of his big, bare, flabby ass branded on my brain, and now every time I see him that's what I'm going to see."

It's true that Hoffman's heaving hindquarters prove to be a hard image to shake in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but Dermody has turned up some more obscure fleshy displays to sear into our memory banks. Any fans of Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends out there? "In the film, Dyan Cannon fantasizes about Burgess Meredith dancing naked in front of her with a book dangling from a chain to strategically cover his privates," writes Dermody. "It's enough to turn you off reading forever."

Dermody is also quite correct to single out Kathy Bates' mud-covered streak through the jungle in At Play in the Fields of the Lord over her much more innocuous hot-tub antics with Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. But we have to guess he never caught Borat in theaters; fighting furball Ken Davitian is missing from the list.