The Screengrab : cecil b demille

The Screengrab Holiday Special, Part One: Live Blogging "The Ten Commandments"

Phil Nugent — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:43:00 GMT

7:00 P.M., Saturday:: It's Easter Eve, which means it's time to kick things off with ABC's umpteenth broadcast of Cecil B. DeMille's career-capping whopper of a religious epic, The Ten Commandments (1956). Back when this was a good, God-fearing nation and it was easier to think of members of this movie's cast who were still alive, it was customary for ABC to run this movie on Sunday, as the cherry on top of the Easter festivities. But now it's been relegated to Saturday evenings, which nowadays are known as the night when the commercial networks don't even bother trying. Back in the days when ABC ran The Ten Commandments in prime time on the theory that someone would watch it, the network would have confronted the issue of the movie's exceptional length by spreading it out over two nights or letting it play past eleven o'clock, forcing local affiliates to try to keep their late-night news anchors up past their bedtimes. Now, eager to just get the august programming tradition the hell over with, ABC starts the movie an hour before prime time, daring moms across the land to call their kids in from soccer practice lest they miss Moses's thrilling origin story.

As it happens, Moses (Charlton Heston) has a pretty bang-up back story. Turned loose as an infant to float down the Nile by his humble Hebrew mother (Martha Scott), Mose is claimed by the barren and widowed princess Bithiah (Nina Foch), who raises him to be the Egyptian Howard Roarke. The mature Moses, working with thousands of slaves and the combined budget of all three Lord of the Rings films at his command, erects giant, phallic obelisks and dramatically throws back curtains to reveal expensive-looking matte paintings, all of which he has done in the name of the old Pharaoh (Cedric Hardwicke), who is suitably impressed. When he's not supervising feats of construction so dazzling that Erich von Daniken will someday make a pretty penny assuring people that they must have been completed using extraterrestrial technology, Moses swaggers about the city followed by a bunch of dudes whose only mission in life is to throw back their heads and guffaw whenever he gets off a good one, usually at the expense of Vincent Price, whose performance here really puts the "super" in "supercilious." (I had a bunch of guys like this following me around during my last two years in high school. Since Vincent Price has already graduated, I used to keep them entertained them by bouncing zingers off the forehead of Jeff Faggard, who I had no role in naming. Poor Jeff later died while standing on his roof adjusting his TV antennae during an electrical storm.)

Moses's chief rival for Cedric Hardwicke's job is Rameses (Yul Brynner), whose only reaction to seeing this eagle-profiled pretender to the throne rise through the ranks is to pout, glare, and seethe, though that has to have been pretty much what DeMille had in mind when he cast the role, since pouting, glaring, and seething would have remained Yul Brynner's default approach to whatever role he was playing even if he'd been cast as Willy Wonka. As if Rameses needed another reason to drop Moses from his Christmas card list, it turns out that the first prize in the "I Want to Be Pharoah" sweepstakes is the hand of the fair Nefretiri, played by Anne Baxter in a dark-bangs-and-bangles ensemble that brings a welcome touch of Bettie Page to the proceedings even before Moses, his Hebrew parentage having come to light, is brought before Pharaoh modeling the latest in jangly bondage gear. Nefretiri makes no pretense of not having a favorite horse in the running for her favors. "You will rule Egypt," she tells Moses, "and I will be your footstool!" "A man stupid enough to use you for a footstool would not be capable of ruling Egypt," Moses replies, showing that he is so pure-hearted a good Jewish boy that her kinkier suggestions are lost on him. When a slave (Judith Anderson) hints that she knows the Terrible Secret about Moses's past, Nefretiri tells her, "Old frog, be careful what you croak about Moses," then solves the problem by throwing Anderson's sandals off the balcony while Anderson is still wearing them.

Of course, the truth has to come out, and it isn't long before Dathan (Edward G. Robinson) has traded the crucial information to Rameses in exchange for a wheelbarrow full of money, Vincent Price's house, and Debra Paget, who looks at him beseechingly and says, "If you fear God, let me go!"--I line that I've heard myself often enough to recognize it as an unfailing sign that the first date isn't going well. Moses is stripped of his royal rank and key to the Playboy Club and sent alone into the desert, where he is cleansed and prepared to do God's work with an ordeal signified by having Heston make with the clenched-jaw grimness while a lucky stagehand sprinkles sand in front of the wind machine pointed in his direction. Finally, he meets a bevy of cuties in brightly colored clothes who seem to rehearsing for a production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It turns out that they are the daughters of Jethro, sheik of Medium, sophisticated international playboy and double-naught spy. When a bunch of Malchites, who seem to be what they had in the days before motorcycle gangs, show up to steal the girls' water and tease their sheep, Moses leaps out of the bushes, brandishing his staff, and demonstrates the Old Testament practice known by religious scholars as kicking ass and taking names. The next thing you know, the girls, having deemed him seriously worthy of their giggly attentions, are competing for the honor of using their precious water to wash his feet. De Mille's research for this picture must have convinced him that the footstool-fetish thing among women crossed all ethnic and class lines in those days.

Jethro welcomes Moses into his home with open arms and offers him the choice of his seven daughters, even though it's not much of a contest, considering that six of the daughters function as a sort of Hebrew chorus to the hottest daughter, played by a pre-Lily Munster Yvonne De Carlo, here completely living up to Jamie Lee Curtis's recent description of her as the Angelina Jolie of her day, minus the proficiency with light firearms. "I shall dwell in this land," Moses announces, doing his best to make it sound as if he has a whole shitload of better options. How comes the part of the story that I could never fully make sense of in Sunday school, when Moses kicks back and lets his hair and beard grow out and turn gray, starts a family, and adopts John Derek, while the Jews are looking at their watches and wondering when they're going to be led out of bondage. I remember thinking, as a kid, that if I were in charge of the spittoon at Pharaoh's place, I'd be kind of eager for Moses to get on with it, but he's determined to wait until he gets the right sign he's waiting for from God. I'll give DeMille and his casting director this: it's a lot easier to understand Moses's measured approach to tackling his mission when he's spending the time leading up to it kicking back with Yvonne De Carlo. Ultimately, however, Moses is invited to a sit-down discussion of the slavery issue with a burning bush, which has the same motivational effect as that letter from the student loan people that first raises the subject of wage garnishment.

Moses goes unto Rameses the Pharaoh, who expresses his disdain for God's messenger by greeting him shirtless while wearing his Zippy the Pinhead hat. Moses, with his special effects wizard John Carradine at his side, tries to impress upon Pharaoh the power of God by throwing his staff upon the floor, where it turns into a cobra. But then Pharaoh orders his own CGI guys to throw their staffs onto the floor, and they turn into cobras too. But Nefreteri announces that Moses's snake was so bad that he ate the other two snakes. I don't know if DeMille decided to not actually show this because he didn't have the technology, but for whatever reason, he has my gratitude. Now comes the part of the story that everybody always looks forward to, the series of anti-miracles when God turns the Nile to cherry Kool-Aid and gets all Magnolia on lower Egypt with the rubber frogs. DeMille, whose faith in the narrative power of female perfidy was forged in the furnaces of a thousand silent movies, makes it clear that what's really keeping the men from reaching a sensible truce is the manipulative scheming of Nefretiri, who's been forced to marry and have a son with a man she can't stand and now sees her old flame roll back into town, not to reclaim her, but just to start some shit about freeing his "people." Whenever Rameses is clearly beginning to think that holding onto his slave labor force just isn't worth it, she gets a bad case of the slinkies and starts taunting him in her Mae West voice.

In the end, she overreaches, because she doesn't expect God to sink low enough to play the death-of-the-firstborn-son card. When Pharaoh sees his own weird little slaphead kid laid out on his deathbed, he orders that Moses be brought to him via "my fastest chariot", adding, "He's my only son," indicating that he'd be willing to write off the loss if he had a couple of replacements cooling in the fridge. When Moses arrives, he finds a defeated man waiting for him, slumped in a chair while the cries of grieving parents are heard rising in the streets outside. Rameses makes a little summing-up speech, telling Moses that he fucked up his relationship with his father, fucked up his chance to be happy with his queen, and has now killed his son; he can't take anymore, and because of that, "I set you free." "It is not by your word or by my hand that we are free," Moses says. "The power of God has freed us." Rameses urges him to shut up and tells him to "take your people, your cattle, your god and your pestilence, take whatever spoils of Egypt you will, but go;" all he asks in return is that they be sure and take Edward G. Robinson with them. While Rameses slumps further in his throne and Nefretiri enters with her dead son in her arms, Moses, looking up to the heavens, intones, "Oh, Lord God, with a strong hand, you lead us out of bitter bondage," and slowly, slowly, slowly exits, talking all the while. At this point, I think we can all agree that Moses, in his moment of triumph, is just being a titanic dick.

As he shuffles off towards the land of milk and honey, Nefretiri hands Rameses their son, uttering the line, "He's dead", in a way that strongly implies that she's been fortifying herself with the cooking sherry, and Rameses deposits the boy's corpse before a huge statue of Sam the Eagle, and promises the most noble Muppet of them all anything if he will restore his son to life. A cut to the morning after establishes that this has worked out about as well as the time I promised God that I would grow up to be a preacher if he would keep them from canceling Holmes and Yoyo. Goaded once more by the missus, Rameses leads his men on a high speed chase after the departing Hebrews and gets to watch as his entire army is decimated in the celebrated sequence depicting the parting and un-parting of the Red Sea. Having established himself as the slowest learner in the history of religious epics, he returns home to sit beside his queen, while the screen turns red to suggest that whatever remaining time this marriage has to run will be an unrelentingly bitter series of "I told you so"s and "Moses would have known how to get a better estimate from the plumber" moments.

Moses leads his people into the desert and disappears into the mountains for forty days, a stretch of time so long that most of the people assume he is dead. They have no way of knowing that God is composing the guidelines for good behavior referred to in the title, reeling them off the top of his head and inscribing them in stone, using the time-consuming dictation-by-fireball method instead of just inventing the laptop. Only when God is finished does he think to mention to Moses that the people he left down there in the valley have gone batshit and are worshiping a golden calf under Edward G. Robinson's direction. When Moses sees this sorry display with his own eyes, he hurls the tablets at the calf, which turns out to be toxic and highly flammable. As punishment, the people are forced to wander in the desert for forty years, at the end of which time Moses slips into a white wig and ascends to Heaven. Which is nice for him, but I always feel that, without wishing this movie were any longer, the period of wandering in the desert for forty years might stand some fleshing out. There could be a sitcom in there somewhere.

DVD Digest for April 7, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a recent Oscar winner finally gets the DVD treatment it deserves, and Warner digs deep into their vaults for a slew of new Blu-Ray titles.

This week’s selection of recent movies is headed by a handful of high-profile December releases, including Jim Carrey in Yes Man (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the Adam Sandler family vehicle Bedtime Stories (Disney, also Blu-Ray), Keanu Reeves in the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the animated The Tale of Despereaux (Universal, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson in Not Easily Broken (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and the controversial British horror movie Donkey Punch (Magnolia).

Last year, many DVD fans expressed displeasure over the shabby treatment given to the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, released in a bare-bones edition to capitalize on the movie’s recent Oscar success. This week, Disney hopes to remedy this with the release of a new “Collector’s Edition” in both standard DVD and Blu-Ray. This new upgrade boasts more than five hours of new features, including documentaries, and interviews with the filmmakers, cast and crew. Also this week: a 75th Anniversary Edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (Universal); Warner’s Pre-Code Hollywood Collection, which includes The Cheat, Merrily We Go to Hell, Hot Saturday, Torch Singer, Murder at the Vanities, and Search for Beauty; the TCM Spotlight: Doris Day Collection (Warner)- includes April in Paris, It’s a Great Feeling, Starlift, Tea for Two, and The Tunnel of Love; and the controversial-in-its-day La Grande Bouffe (E1 Entertainment).

The big Blu-Ray news this week is Warner’s release of nine (mostly dodgy, I must say) new titles in the format. The Warner Blu-Ray releases are: Peter Hyams’ 2010, Steven Seagal in Above the Law, Edward Norton in American History X, The Governator in Collateral Damage; the Rube Goldberg-esque thriller Final Destination; Denzel Washington standing up to the American health care system in John Q, an extended cut of Angelina Jolie in Taking Lives, and the 80s-set Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore rom-com The Wedding Singer. Also this week, a double feature of avian-themed Sony releases: Fly Away Home and Winged Migration.

Finally, the selection was pretty thin for plot synopses, so I wasn’t able to find a suitable Synopsis of the Week. The best I can do is a pretty unbeatable title: Britney Spears: The Return of An Angel. Doesn’t that sound like just about the cheesiest thing ever? Too bad the White Elephant Blogathon is over, because that could’ve made for a fun submission. Oh well- there’s always next year…

Up The Academy: Screengrab Salutes The All-Time Best & Worst Best Picture Winners (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:30:00 GMT

THE WORST:

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

In 1939 dollars, Gone With The Wind is still the highest-grossing picture of all time, and it's certainly epic and iconic, what with the burning of Atlanta and Vivien Leigh’s mother of all Oscar clip lines, “As God as my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!” (not to mention Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler not giving a damn and Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy not knowin’ nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies). But lawzy me, what a stupid movie. For one thing, Scarlett O’Hara is easily one of the most annoying characters in cinema history – hardly the sort of person you’d want to spend 222 minutes with (or 238 minutes with overture, entr’act and exit music...thanks, Wikipedia)! Gable’s a hoot, of course...but there are plenty of other, better Gable movies that don’t require the audience to giggle at date rape and cheer the Confederacy. Even setting aside the fact that, as a Yankee (and a heterosexual male), I may not exactly be the film’s target audience, there’s still the issue of the production’s relentless over-the-top Cheez Whiz melodrama. Sure, acting styles have changed over the years, but Of Mice & Men, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Stagecoach were all nominated the same year, so it’s not as if Leigh’s proto-drag queen scenery chewing only looks goofy from a modern perspective: I’m pretty sure the movie was stupid in 1939, too.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952)

Widely cited as the worst movie ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, the circus-corn epic The Greatest Show On Earth may have benefited from the political tenor of the times. Its main competition was High Noon, a vastly superior film that nonetheless made AMPAS voters nervous because of its barely disguised anti-McCarthyite message and blacklisted screenwriter. Whatever the reason for its win, there’s no denying that The Greatest Show On Earth is a big load of elephant shit. Even if Cecil B. DeMille hadn’t made it a good 25 years past his own personal expiration date as a filmmaker, it was leagues out of his comfort zone: used to coaching actors in sweeping Biblical and historical epics, he didn’t take to the tawdry, small love triangle under the big top, and no wonder. The dialogue is pure hokum, and the performances range from overblown (Cornel Wilde as an acrobat) to comatose (Charlton Heston as the circus manager). The central romance has as much heat as a paper safely match, and every subplot – and there’s plenty of them in its bloated two and a half hours – is as predictable as it is uninteresting. Even the presence of Jimmy Stewart does nothing to salvage the movie, since his role, as a clown with a dark secret, is telegraphed from the first frame. There’s lots of phony reaction shots of local yokels gasping at the wondrous sights and sounds of the circus, but it’s often unclear what they’re watching; it sure ain’t this movie.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)

The fact that this musical trip to the deep freeze that is Julie Andrews' soul was the biggest box-office sensation of the mid-1960s and held onto the title of Number One Hit of All Time for seven years until it was dislodged by, of all things, The Godfather, just goes to prove that you never know. Critics like to imagine that movies tell us something about the times in which they were made, but when you consider what was going on in the world between 1965 and 1972, all you can surmise from this movie's success is that people must have been desperate to escape reality as thoroughly as they could without barricading themselves inside an isolation tank. If you look at the reviews it received at the time, you see that even polite mainstream critics saw it as a potential menace that would lay waste to the culture like some species of plague, but looking at it with forty years of hindsight, the funniest thing about the movie is that it seems to have come and gone without leaving any progeny. It did inspired the studios to plow millions upon millions of dollars into "family musicals" (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Doctor Dolittle, Paint Your Wagon, etc.), all of which are now best remembered for providing an education in just how little return it is possible to get on a major investment. Subsequent attempts to squeeze another nickel out of Andrews' screen image proved largely unsuccessful. (The 1968 musical Star! -- her reunion with The Sound of Music director Robert Wise -- was one of the great financial disasters of the era.) The closest the movie has come to being positively re-evaluated came in the 1990s, when it attracted a cult that attended screenings in fancy dress and talked back to the screen, Rocky Horror-style. For the first time ever, Christopher Plummer's Dracula-like performance as Baron Von Trapp actually made sense.

ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980)

Had anyone else been behind the cameras for Ordinary People, it would have come and gone with no great comment -- and perhaps even a modest amount of praise, for the quiet family drama isn’t terrible by any stretch -- but certainly without much hoopla, and definitely without a Best Picture nomination, let alone a win. But because Robert Redford was its director, and Hollywood has always been dismayingly overimpressed with actors who don’t completely embarrass themselves in the director’s chair, it ended up being praised far beyond its virtues. It’s hard to pick out any element about it that’s rotten; the performances are generally adept, the story is competent enough, and the direction is inoffensive. It’s a lot like a small literary novel that comes and goes without much comment. But just as there’s nothing much to damn it with, there’s also nothing much to recommend it. The Best Picture victory of the movie a lot of wise-asses immediately dubbed Ordinary Movie wouldn’t be such a sore thumb if it wasn’t for the competition it bested; not only did it triumph over Coal Miner’s Daughter, which covered much of the same ground only better, but it also beat out The Elephant Man and, shockingly, Raging Bull, both of which, unlike Redford’s directorial debut, went on to be numbered with the greatest films of the decade. Once it became clear what kind of filmmaker Redford really was, the Academy stopped embarrassing themselves by nominating him for big awards; if only they’d figured it out sooner.

FORREST GUMP (1994)

Of all the problems with our culture, what is the single most destructive and indefensible? Gosh, there's so many to choose from, but I'm gonna have to go with the enduringly popular notion that mental retardation and moral goodness are closely linked, to such a degree that one may not be fully possible without the other. Even in politics, the candidate who does the worst job of concealing the breadth of his intelligence is likely to be tagged as a know-it-all elitist and silver-tongued devil, and the one least ashamed of coming across as a dumbass is touted as being a tribune of the people who has the moral certitude that comes from being too dumb to know internal conflict. Forrest Gump isn't a movie about a hero who makes the right choices but the story of someone who does the right thing because he's such a dope that he doesn't know he has any other options. (Forrest's smarter friends, his lifelong love Jenny and his commanding officer in Vietnam, go down self-destructive paths that Forrest is too good to even know are there.) I think that a movie like this must have a special sick appeal in Hollywood, which is full of cynical, morally compromised people who find such nonsense comforting because it can be taken as a reassuring message to slimeballs everywhere: only the stupid can be truly good, so if you're not as good as you might like, it's not your fault: you just had the mixed fortune of being smart. The director, Robert Zemeckis, knows a lot about cynicism and moral compromise; he used to satirize it in movies like his great 1980 comedy Used Cars, and he found out that satire doesn't pay the bills. But even he may have been surprised to discover just how profitable sentimentalizing stupidity can be. Compared to this thing, Pulp Fiction, which it beat out for Best Picture, is as innocent as a newly born kitten on Christmas morning.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Set Your DVR!: December 8 - 15, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday's Hits: The Robe (1953, Henry Koster)

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Since the rise of DVD, the entertainment media has made a fuss over the declining profitability of theatrical exhibition. According to any number of articles on the subject, the increased quality of home viewing has resulted fewer people leaving the house to spend their entertainment dollar. But whether or not this is actually the case, any student of film history can tell you that this is hardly the first time Hollywood has faced this kind of crisis. After all, with the advent of television in the 1950s, Hollywood found themselves having to get creative in order to make money with their movies. In order to compete with television, the studios decided to give viewers what they couldn’t get on their televisions, and the best way to do this was to make their movies big. A number of large-format processes resulted from the period- Cinerama, VistaVision, and the like. Fox’s new format was CinemaScope, and the first film released in this process was 1953’s The Robe.

What made The Robe a hit? Well, CinemaScope certainly had a lot to do with it. The ‘Scope screen was huge, but unlike other new formats such as Cinerama, CinemaScope only required one projector, making it a good deal viable and easier to operate for most theatres. A good number of theatres upgraded to CinemaScope, but even those that didn’t were still able to play the film, as the studio took care to shoot the movie in standard spherical format as well.

But regardless of the shape of the screen, audiences took to The Robe in a big way. Biblical epics were very much in vogue during the early 1950s, not least because the biblical source material made them much easier to swallow for the Breen Office, still Hollywood’s arbiters for onscreen morality. Likewise, audiences responded not only to the lavish sets and costumes, but also to the larger-than-life heroes and villains, uncomplicated morality, and grandiose re-enactments of the stories they’d heard all their lives but hadn’t seen come alive onscreen before. The Robe had all these elements, and combined with the novelty of CinemaScope, the film became the second-biggest hit of 1953, putting millions of dollars in Fox’s coffers and CinemaScope on the map.

What happened? There are certain movie genres that remain popular over time and others who fall out of fashion, and Biblical epics fell into the latter category. No matter how ambitious the films were, they were also almost invariably marked by a tendency toward hamfisted dialogue and storytelling, as well as overripe performances. As the 1950s continued, Biblical epics became simultaneously more expensive and less profitable, and while the genre still produced the occasional hit- most notably The Ten Commandments- for the most part viewers had moved on to other genres. And unlike many other genres, the Biblical epic has yet to come back into fashion or undergo a critical resurgence, perhaps because nowadays we prefer our epics without all that pesky moralizing. But whatever the reason, The Robe is remembered today almost entirely for its status as the first CinemaScope release, rather than for its own merits as a film.

Does The Robe still work? Not really. To begin with, the film’s story isn’t especially compelling. The Robe was based on a bestselling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, but while Douglas’ work had a great deal of appeal for readers, his storytelling was fairly prosaic. Like a number of other films of its kind, The Robe tells the story of Christ through a peripheral figure, this time the Roman centurian Marcellus Gallio (played by Richard Burton) who is present at the Crucifixion and wins Christ’s robe in a game of dice. But after Christ’s death, Marcellus begins to imagine that the Robe is cursed and soon embarks on a mission to discover the secret of the Robe, only to fall in with Christ’s followers. You can imagine where it goes from there- Marcellus begins to believe, he returns to Rome to spread the good news, and ends up becoming a martyr. Not much of a story, that’s for sure.

Of course, Burton’s presence in the lead role makes it easier to take. Long one of my favorite actors, Burton supposedly considered The Robe one of his worst films, but while this is hardly a top-notch Burton performance, it’s always a pleasure to watch him onscreen and savor his amazing voice. Most of the supporting cast can’t measure up- Victor Mature mostly counts on his beefcake physique to carry his performance, Jean Simmons is pretty but little else as Burton’s love interest, and Michael Rennie’s Peter is defined almost entirely by his rockin’ beard. The only secondary player to make much of an impression is Jay Robinson. Robinson’s take on Caligula isn’t in the same league as John Hurt’s in I, Claudius, but he’s still fun to watch, especially when he’s yelling out orders with hammy relish. It’s a campy performance, but it’s better than we get from most of his costars.

Strangely, it’s this lack of campiness that may have contributed to The Robe’s loss of popularity. The Biblical epic is traditionally one of the most campiest of genres, and in particular the saints’n’sinners epics of Cecil B. DeMille can still be enjoyed for their cheeseball value. By contrast, director Henry Koster was a skilled craftsman, but lacked DeMille’s flair for shameless entertainment, and consequently The Robe is too straight and respectable to work in the same way as DeMille’s films. Aside from Robinson’s scenes and Burton’s bits of Robe-inspired madness, there’s not much fun to be had while watching the film. And since the movie doesn’t work as straight drama either, that doesn’t leave us with any other reason to watch it. All that’s left is to be thankful to the film for getting the ball rolling on widescreen filmmaking, which ended up resulting in many movies that are far better and more enduring than The Robe.

Charlton Heston (1924-2008)

Paul Clark — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:39:00 GMT

Charlton Heston, one of only a handful of honest-to-goodness stars remaining from Hollywood's Golden Age, has passed away at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 84 years old. He is survived by Lydia, his wife of 64 years, and his two children and three grandchildren. Details about Heston's death are still sketchy at this point, but he had suffered from symptoms similar to Alzheimer's Disease for years.

Heston began his acting career on the stage, with his first movie role coming from a filmed theatre performance of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, recorded when Heston was all of 17. But the film that brought him into the public eye was Cecil B. DeMille's Oscar-winner The Greatest Show on Earth, in which he played Ben Braden, the manager of the circus and held his own opposite James Stewart and Betty Hutton, among others. In the next few years, Heston split his time between film and television, one of the few actors who managed to work steadily in both media.

However, his stardom skyrocketed when DeMille came calling again, casting Heston as Moses in his final film, 1956's The Ten Commandments. The role required a truly commanding presence, not just to be convincing as the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt, but also to hold his own against the then-awe inspiring special effects, but Heston pulled it off. From there Heston specialized in similarly larger-than-life heroes, often in period adventures such as The Big Country, El Cid, and Ben-Hur, for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor.

In the 1960s, Heston's stardom continued even as his career choices became more inconsistent- for every Major Dundee, there was a The Agony and the Ecstasy in which he was severely miscast in the role of Michelangelo (yes, that one). But he once again found his groove at the end of the decade with Planet of the Apes, now considered a science fiction classic. It was the first in a series of futuristic dramas for Heston, who went on to appear in the film's sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, before starring in The Omega Man and Soylent Green.

During the 1970s, even as young filmmakers and new actors were gaining clout in Hollywood, Heston stuck to his guns and continued playing the sorts of heroes that made him a star. His presence was right at home in square blockbusters like Earthquake and Airport '75, as well as 1976's bloated war epic Midway. Shortly thereafter, Heston began to turn again to television, starring in a number of TV movies, as well as making a guest appearance on Dynasty as Jason Colby, who was later given his own series, The Colbys.

In the 1990s, Heston's leading-man opportunities had mostly dried up, and after that he worked regularly as a dependable character actor, lending an old-Hollywood authority to films like Tombstone, In the Mouth of Madness, and Any Given Sunday, as well as putting in a cameo in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake. In addition, he also did a good amount of voiceover work, his commanding baritone gracing films as diverse as Armageddon and Disney's Hercules. He also showed a surprising ability to kid his square-jawed image. After two hosting stints on Saturday Night Live, he had arguably the best scene in the otherwise disposable Wayne's World 2, playing "The Better Actor." He also appeared in True Lies as Arnold Schwarzenegger's CIA boss, a role that allowed him to pass the torch to Arnold as Hollywood's biggest right-leaning star.

In recent years, Heston's politics have increasingly overshadowed his acting. Heston, a longtime supporter of the National Rifle Association, served as its president in 1998, a position he served in until his diagnosis with Alzheimer's. But rather than remembering Heston for his politics- or his final major big-screen appearance in Michael Moore's Bowing For Columbine- I prefer to remember the good times. Of his storied career, I treasure most two performances he gave nearly two decades apart.

The first, of course, is Touch of Evil. Hollywood legend has it that Orson Welles was only supposed to act in the film, and that Heston (who had only taken the role to be directed by Welles) was largely responsible for Welles directing the film. At first glance, Heston's brand of straightforward heroism seems at odds with Welles' morally twisty vision. However, Heston is exactly what the film needs, an uncomplicated but compelling protagonist to contrast with the rest of the proceedings, in particular Welles' corrupt, seedy Hank Quinlan. It all works perfectly, and Heston deserves much of the credit for this, despite the fact that he may just have made film history's least convincing Mexican.

At the other end of his career, in the middle of his elder-statesman period, Heston gave what may have been his best performance in Kenneth Branagh's epic production of Hamlet. Ever since his early work, Branagh has had a love for stunt casting, often to disastrous ends. But Heston's performance is no stunt. In the small but important role of The Player King, he shows a real aptitude for Shakespeare's language, as well as a sensitivity to the nuances of the material. The first time I saw his performance, I couldn't help but think that I'd underestimated Heston all these years. More than just a presence, Heston was an actor, and one who will be greatly missed.