The Screengrab : charlize theron

Trailer Review: The Road

Paul Clark — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

One of the problems with big-budget post-apocalyptic movies is that most audiences are down with downbeat storylines, preferring to watch movies that make them feel good and don’t remind them of the world’s troubles. Consequently, most movies set in a dystopian future tend to be action-oriented, to make the stories’ hard truths more palatable by adding plenty of chase scenes and shootouts. The most troubling thing about this trailer for The Road is that the Weinsteins look to be selling just that kind of movie when the story doesn’t really call for it. Sure, this approach might get a few more asses in the seats, but the I Am Legend crowd might grow uneasy with the despair and desperation that the story- or at least the original novel by Cormac McCarthy- traffics in, and might feel ripped off. Another really hamfisted tactic this trailer uses is the liberal use of Charlize Theron, who by all rights should be barely in the movie itself, but is portrayed as more or less a co-lead with Viggo Mortensen. Still, I have faith in this movie’s potential- even if Harvey Scissorhands gets his choppers on this one, McCarthy, Mortensen and director John Hillcoat bring enough talent to the party that it should at least be interesting. More interesting than the trailer, anyway.

DVD Digest for March 10, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

Screengrab 2009 Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Again using the ever-popular 3 Up, 3 Down format, I will pick up the gauntlet thrown down by my colleague Andrew Osborne. (Hey, nice gauntlet, Osborne! You get a hat with that?) I must say, a cursory scan of the upcoming release schedule doesn’t exactly have me all a-quiver with anticipation, but hey, it’s early yet. Herewith, my picks to click and tips to slip. Or something like that.

3 UP

A SERIOUS MAN

I could really get used to this annual Coen Brothers movie routine. This year’s edition isn’t due until October, but it should be worth the wait. It’s “the story of an ordinary man’s search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV.” Unlike Burn After Reading, the film doesn’t boast an all-star cast, unless Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed and Richard Kind are at the top of your A-list. But who cares, as long as we get that Coen Brothers feeling.

THE LIMITS OF CONTROL

The long-awaited (by me anyway) return of Jim Jarmusch is “the story of a mysterious loner (Isaach. De Bankolé), a stranger, whose activities remain meticulously outside the law. He is in the process of completing a job, yet he trusts no one, and his objectives are not initially divulged. The film is set in the striking and varied landscapes of contemporary Spain (both urban and otherwise).” Okay, that’s a little vague, but it’s enough to intrigue me. The cast also includes Gael García Bernal, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and, of course, Bill Murray.

THE ROAD

Left over from last year, which isn’t necessarily a great sign. Then again, there are indications the editing was being rushed to meet the end-of-2008 deadline, and that probably wouldn’t have been a good thing either. Quoting myself from last year’s fall preview, the Cormac McCarthy adaptation is a “grim post-apocalyptic tale brought to the screen by John Hillcoat, director of The Proposition, a western that certainly counts McCarthy’s Blood Meridian among its influences. Viggo Mortenson has the lead, and the supporting cast includes Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garrett Dillahunt and The Wire’s Omar himself, Michael K. Williams.”

3 DOWN

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3

Oh good, a completely unnecessary remake of a perfectly fine ‘70s movie, over-directed by Tony Scott and featuring John Travolta in an unconvincing villainous mustache. But at least it has Denzel Washington looking dumpy. Maybe that’s his homage to Walter Matthau.

LAND OF THE LOST

''You're not going to see the zipper up the back of the Sleestaks' costumes,” says Will Ferrell, star of this preposterous remake of the beloved Saturday morning show of yesteryear. Is that supposed to make me want to see this?

STATE OF PLAY

The original British miniseries is an intricate work of intrigue about a newspaper with seemingly unlimited resources investigating political scandal. (Eat your heart out, David Simon.) The trailer for the American remake promises a generic, forgettable thriller.

WILD CARD: Watchmen, of course. Will it suck? Will it somehow blow our minds? Heck, will it even be released?

DVD Digest for November 25, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a surprisingly small selection leading into the so-called “biggest shopping day of the year.”

Recent releases coming to DVD include Will Smith and Charlize Theron in Hancock (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Vince Vaughn making a grab for your Christmas cash in Fred Claus (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Eddie Murphy inside Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and Andy Samberg going from talking to animals as Mark Wahlberg to playing a talking animal himself in Space Chimps (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

In classics this week, Criterion releases two seminal nineties films, Wes Anderson’s debut effort Bottle Rocket and Wong Kar-wai’s awesome and Tarantino-approved Chungking Express. But don’t fret, Blu-Ray fans- they’ll be coming out in that format in December, so don’t cross them off the Christmas list.

In TV on DVD, this week brings the season-bridging special 24: Redemption (Fox), plus everyone’s fake wingnut in A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All (Paramount).

Finally, this week’s Blu-Ray only releases are a Jamie Foxx double feature, Jarhead and The Kingdom (both Universal).

Morning Deal Report: Nicole Kidman Marries Charlize Theron

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

If the voters of California had visualized that headline, Prop. 8 might have had a completely different outcome. Alas, it’s a match made only for the movies (as far as we know): Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron will star in The Danish Girl. Kidman plays artist Einar Wegener, a man with a very smooth forehead who, with the encouragement of his wife Greta (Theron), adopts a female guise for a series of portraits. “What began as a harmless game led Einer to a metamorphosis and landmark 1931 operation that shocked the world and threatened their love,” per The Hollywood Reporter. That operation? Well, it ain’t liposuction.

As we await Werner Herzog’s highly unnecessary version of The Bad Lieutenant, news reports of an even less essential remake have surfaced. Larry Clark (Kids) will direct an update of Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, per Screen Daily. But that’s not all! “Hayden Christensen is in formal negotiations to take the lead in HandMade's remake of Mona Lisa. He will take on a younger version of George, the character made famous by Bob Hoskins in the original.” I’d rather see Bob Hoskins as Anakin Skywalker, but maybe that’s just me.

More! We demand more bad remake news! How about this: “Columbia Pictures is back in the dojo with a new version of the 1984 hit The Karate Kid, which has been refashioned as a star vehicle for Jaden Smith,” Variety reports. That’s Will Smith’s 10-year-old boy, who co-starred with his dad in The Pursuit of Happyness.

Related:
Charlize Theron Is a Sexual Creature
Werner Herzog's Very Bad Idea

Morning Deal Report: We Can't Stop the Three Stooges Revival

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The Farrelly brothers are doing their best to ensure that we never go to the movies again. Last week we reported their involvement in the farting dog movie. Now Variety reports that Bobby and Peter Farrelly “will renew their quest to channel the comic mayhem of the Three Stooges into a contemporary comedy.” If visions of Michael Chiklis as Curly are dancing (and slapping) in your head, Peter Farrelly would like to reassure you. “"It’s not a biopic. It takes place in present day, and they look, dress and sound exactly like the Stooges…When the economy started turning, we felt like the world could use a Stooges slapfest.” You know, he’s right. I do need a movie that won’t tempt me to spend any money.

Add another project to the 57 or so Steven Soderbergh already has in the works. With Che due in theaters and The Girlfriend Experience and Liberace on deck, Soderbergh will lend his name as executive producer to the mob movie Making Jack Falcone. Che screenwriter Peter Buchman will pen “the story of Joaquin ‘Jack’ Garcia, also known as Jack Falcone, a Cuban-American FBI agent who successfully went undercover in the Gambino crime family,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Charlize Theron may co-star with Tom Cruise in The Tourist. She’d play “a female Interpol agent who uses an American tourist in an attempt to flush out an elusive criminal with whom she once had an affair,” per Variety. Just do what she says, Mr. Cruise.

Related:
Steven Soderbergh's "Girlfriend Experience"
Charlize Theron is a Sexual Creature

Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

We’ve reached that part of the summer when Rainn Wilson comedies and films by Fred Durst are considered top new releases, so it must be time to look ahead to the fall. Traditionally this is the movie season for Oscar contenders and challenging indie fare, so let’s put away the robots and superhero tights and play a little 3 Up, 3 Down. (Feel free to weigh in with your own picks, my fellow Screengrabbers – if you dare.)

3 UP

1. Burn After Reading – No Country for Old Men was a return to form for the Coens, and we’re all happy they finally got their Oscars. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a pure shot of that Coen Brothers feeling. No Country was adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Ladykillers was a remake, and Intolerable Cruelty originated with other writers. Based on the trailer, Burn After Reading looks like a return to the inventive goofiness of The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou?, which puts it right in my wheelhouse.

2. The Road – Speaking of Cormac McCarthy, the second adaptation of his work in as many years in due in November. The grim post-apocalyptic tale is brought to the screen by John Hillcoat, director of The Proposition, a western that certainly counts McCarthy’s Blood Meridian among its influences. Viggo Mortenson has the lead, and the supporting cast includes Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garrett Dillahunt and The Wire’s Omar himself, Michael K. Williams.

3. Synecdoche, New York – Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut didn’t exactly wow most critics at Cannes, but the guy hasn’t let me down yet. (Well, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind didn’t really do it for me, but I’ll blame Sam Rockwell for that.) Even if it doesn’t really work, the premise – which has theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman building a replica of New York in a warehouse – should provide more of the Kauf’s trademark reality-bending weirdness.

3 DOWN

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still – Unnecessary remake of a sci-fi classic, with Keanu Reeves as an alien? The first time I saw this trailer, I thought it was a fake. The second time, I just said “No thanks.”

2. Twilight – I understand I’m not the target demographic for this “y.a.” phenomenon, but I still resent the fact that it’s in my face everywhere I go these days, and that’s only going to get worse as the release of this adaptation approaches.

3. The Women – This has got to be the uber-chick flick of the year: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Bette Midler and Debra Messing in a remake of the George Cukor classic. If I grow a vagina between now and when it comes out, maybe I’ll reconsider.

WILD CARD

Oliver Stone’s W. This can’t possibly be any good, can it? And yet I can’t wait to see it. We might be looking at a train wreck for the ages here.

Related:
Movie Magic: Making Pittsburgh Ugly Enough For "The Road"
Oliver Stone Finds His Dick

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 28-July 4, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Hey gang, we're taking the day off to roast some weenies and blow a few bottle rockets off the roof of Screengrab headquarters. But that's no reason you can't celebrate your independence by catching up on the week in Screengrab!

Do your patriotic duty and check out America the Beautiful: 15 Movies That Show What's Right with U.S. (Parts One, Two and Three)

Celebrate your Independence Day with, er, Independence Day. Either that or cheer on our national pastime with The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

Here's an All-American Gal for ya! OK, a South African All-American Gal, but still: Charlize Theron Is a Sexual Creature.

If you have the day off, why not catch up with Wall-E? We investigated director Andrew Stanton's Retro-Futurism and pondered whether Wall-E and Silent Running were Separated at Birth.

When I'm grilling my burgers, I like to crank up the Superfly soundtrack, especially if it's a Long Hot Summer.

No celebration of what makes America great would be complete without The Joker, The Smokers and The Midnight Tokers. (At least, we assume they were toking something to conceive a sequel to 300.)

You know who wasn't American? Derek Jarman. However, Don S. Davis was.

And finally, we hope you all are taking a much-deserved Requiem for a Day Off.

Charlize Theron Is a Sexual Creature

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Charlize Theron is on the publicity trail in hopes someone will notice she’s co-starring in the big Fourth of July weekend extravaganza Hancock. (She was hardly featured in the early trailers, although, perhaps in reaction to some bad buzz, she’s much more of a presence in the latest round of ads.) “When she walks into a room she reduces everyone else to hobbits - but she's better known for her acting,” Carole Cadwalladr writes in The Observer. Maybe that’s true, but it’s probably more accurate to say Theron is best known for her willingness to ugly it up if the role demands it. Not that she’s happy about that.

For instance, for her role in In the Valley of Elah, Theron grew out her natural hair color and wore a ponytail, which is a pretty far cry from the prosthetic teeth and latex skin she used to transform herself into serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Still, the press cited this as yet another example of Theron playing down her beauty. “It just bummed me out because I was, ‘What do you want?’ Do you want me to play a detective from Albuquerque who's a single mom in a Dior dress?...The way they focused on my appearance, I felt like it hurt that film and I was embarrassed because Paul [Haggis] had worked really hard and just because I had a ponytail that's what they were talking about.”

That won’t be a problem with Hancock, in which Theron is “the archetypal soccer mom, a vision of all-American apple-pie goodness, blonde and peachy,” according to Cadwalladr, who notes that while Theron is willing to play down her looks on the screen, she’s perfectly happy to play them up for “photo spreads for the likes of Playboy and Barely Legal.” Says Theron: “Well guess what? I'm a sexual creature. There's nothing wrong with that. Why do we have to be ashamed of being so many different things? Why do we have to be only one thing, a good mother or a hooker? I don't think that what's under my clothes is evil. I'm a woman, I'm feminine. And I like the way I look. And I celebrate that. And I don't make excuses for that.” Screengrab approves this message.

Related:
Trailer Review: Hancock
Movie Magic: Making Pittsburgh Ugly Enough for "The Road"

Movie Magic: Making Pittsburgh Ugly Enough for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Charles McGrath drops in on the set of The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel and directed by the Australian John Hillcoat, who seems to have a thing for arid nightmare landscapes and writers with a Biblical tinge to their prose. (His previous film was the outback period Western The Proposition, from an original script by Nick Cave. In the novel, McGrath notes, "because of some unexplained catastrophe...the sky is gray, the rivers are black, and color is just a memory. The landscape is covered in ash, with soot falling perpetually from the air. The cities are blasted and abandoned. The roads are littered with corpses either charred or melted, their dreams, Mr. McCarthy writes, 'ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.'” In order to get the right atmosphere for such a tale, the film crew has been shooting in Pittsburgh--best known to film historians as the launching pad for George A. Romero's zombie chronicles--New Orleans, and Mount St. Helens. But even there, sometimes things just look too good for the end of the world. When McGrath arrived to observe the filming, "The sky was blue, the sun so bright that crew members were smearing on sunscreen. A breeze was carrying away the fog pumping feebly from a smoke machine. Even worse, green grass was sprouting everywhere, and there were buds on the trees." "Today is a bad day," lamented special effects director Mark Forker.

Eventually, the picnic weather will be CGI'ed out of existence. For now, Hillcoat is concentrating on his actors and what McGrath refers to as the locations' "pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes" and "a burned-down amusement park in Lake Conneaut and an eight-mile stretch of abandoned freeway, complete with tunnel." The film stars Viggo Mortenson and an eleven-year-old Australian boy, Kodi Smith-McPhee as the nameless father and son at the center, with brief appearances by Robert Duvall, Michael K. Williams, Garret Dillahunt, Guy Pearce (who starred in The Proposition) and Charlize Theron, in flashbacks, as the dead wife and mother of the principals. Mortensen describes the material as "a love story that’s also an endurance contest. I mean that in a positive way. They’re on this difficult journey, and the father is basically learning from the son. So if the father-son thing doesn’t work, then the movie doesn’t work. The rest of it wouldn’t matter. It would never be more than a pretty good movie. But with Kodi in it, it has a chance to be an extremely good movie, maybe even a great one.” For now, much of the buzz around the movie is about Kdoi Smith-McPhee, "privately referred to [on the set]... as the Alien because of the uncanny, almost freakish way that on a moment’s notice he switched accents and turned himself from a child into a movie star." "I don’t even think of him as a kid," says Mortenson. There are things he’s done on this movie that I’ve never seen anybody do before. And there are many adult actors who never have a moment like he has every day."

The Rep Report (May 22--26)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

SEATTLE: The 34th Seattle International Film Festival opens tonight and runs through June 15. The opening night attraction is Battle in Seattle, directed by Stuart "Mr. Charlize Theron" Townsend and starring an ensemble cast led by Charlize Theron. The movie is a "semi-fictionalized account" of the 1999 meeting in Seattle of representatives of the World Trade Organization, which was plagued by demonstrators who thought that globalization sucks, man. (As part of the movie's celebration of down-with-the -street anti-capitalist action, the festival organizers promise an "unforgettable opportunity to walk the red carpet with the stars" to be followed by a "fabulous gala party will follow with live entertainment, and complimentary champagne cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.") For more information and a lot of laughs, check out The Stranger's festival blog.
CAMBRIDGE: Of all movie genres, film noir may be the one that ascribes the most value to the low-rent and obscure and unloved, but by now the contents of the vaults have been through the sluice many times by wild-eyed men looking for the last hidden gold nugget of intense sleaze. So cultists are bound to impressed by the people who assembled Harvard Film Archives's Unseen Noir series (May 23-26) just for making good on their billing. It's a long weekend full of titles you may have heard of but probably haven't seen by directors you know you need to catch up on: Joseph H. Lewis's My Name Is Julia Ross with Nina Foch and Dame Mae Whitty; Jacques Tourneur's Nightfall with Brian Keith, Aldo Rey and a young Anne Bancroft; Andre' de Toth's Pitfall; and a double bill of Phil Karlson pictures: The Brothers Rico, starring Richard Conte in a loose adaptation of a Simenon novel, and 99 River Street, which has a great poster showing a rabid-looking John Payne apparently being restrained from chain-whipping a street sign that has the effrontery to bear the film's title.

NEW YORK: Anthology Film Archives celebrates Memorial Day with a four-day weekend's worth of Korean films about the Korean War and its aftereffects, from May 22 through the 25th. Included are Lee Man-Hui' The Marines Who Never Returned, the 1984 Warm Winter Was Gone, and 2000's Joint Security Area, directed by Chan-wook Park, who has since become best known in the West for the films in his "venegance trilogy", including Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

For those balmy summer nights, the IFC Center launches a series of Friday and Satuday midnight screenings of sci-fi cult classics, to run through June. Things kick off this weekend with the scientifically accurate Alien before taking a massive nosedive in the plausibility department with the original 1978 TV pilot-turned-"feature film" Battlestar Galactica and John Boorman's giggle-a-minute Zardoz. Also on tap: David Lynch's love letter to the city of Philadelphia Eraserhead (he didn't film it there, but it was his way of telling it that he wasn't coming back), Woody Allen's Sleeper, and the original, feral Mad Max.

Christopher Walken Wigs Out

Phil Nugent — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Every year, Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals selects a man and a woman to publically humiliate in recognition of their years of selfless hard work devoted to enriching America's traditional role as the entertainment capital of our galaxy. A couple of weeks ago, it was Charlize Theron's turn to show what a good sport she is, and this past weekend, America's most beloved living song and dance man, Christopher Walken, hit the campus to show the enthusiastic youngsters how it's done. According to BBC News, the star of The Deer Hunter, King of New York, and The Country Bears "sang a tune from the musical Hairspray during the performance and took part in a sketch involving cow-bells, which parodied an earlier appearance of his on the US TV show Saturday Night Live. He said he was 'amazed and thrilled' to receive his prize, although he joked: 'I hope nobody's watching.'" Not much more to this one, really, but there was no way in hell we weren't going to find an excuse to post this photo.

Morning Deal Report: Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortensen in "The Road"

Peter Smith — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

With No Country for Old Men topping many a critic's list, the next Cormac McCarthy adaptation is just around the corner; Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortensen are set to star in the film version McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road.

Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen are both contributing to New York, I Love You, an anthology film along the lines of Paris je t'aime, which collected twelve stories of love in Paris by major directors. But apparently Johansson will be directing her own segment, not starring in Allen's.

With Harry Potter 6 still to come, debate (among fans, if not filmmakers) rages over whether Harry Potter 7 should be one film or two.

Trailer Roundup: Hancock

Paul Clark — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

After lording over this December's box office with the surprisingly-good I Am Legend, Will Smith returns to his natural domain, both in terms of release date (July 4 weekend) and the affable, jokey tone of the trailer. The premise could go either way- the idea of a superhero who's kind of a loser may be fertile material for a bit on Cartoon Network, but it remains to be seen whether it can be sustained at feature length. Oh, and I love you Jason Bateman, but slow down, man- it seems like the guy's starred in half the movies Hollywood has released since 2006. Oh, and according to the IMDb synopsis Bateman's wife is played by Charlize Theron, so if she isn't wearing the "MR. F" wristband I'll be sort of disappointed.

New Holiday Classics: Reindeer Games

Peter Smith — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:00:00 GMT

In his new memoir Born Standing Up, Steve Martin recalls that, back in the late ‘60s, he romanced the daughter of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, until the director John Frankenheimer stole her from him while filming Trumbo's script for The Fixer. After mentioning that, two decades later, the director tried to seduce Victoria Tennant at a time when she was Martin's wife, Martin notes that "Frankenheimer died a few years ago, but it was not I who killed him." Unlikely though it may seem, John Frankenheimer actually did get a few movies directed when he wasn't concentrating on screwing with Steve Martin's love life. The 2000 Reindeer Games was his last film, and though not in the same league as his masterpiece The Manchurian Candidate, it's actually one of his live ones.

This thriller, from an original screenplay by plot-twist specialist Ehren Kruger, stars Ben Affleck as a prison inmate who's sort of a Cyrano de Bergerac in reverse; Ben's best pal in prison has been exchanging love letters with a young lady he's never met in the flesh, but when the pal is killed in the prison yard and Ben, after being released, meets the girl and she turns out to be Charlize Theron, he pretends to be the dead man. (This may sound like a bad idea, but remember that Entertainment Weekly has recently determined that Ben is only the fiftieth-smartest person in Hollywood.) Enter Theron's blue collar werewolf of a brother (Gary Sinise) and his posse of plug-uglies (Clarence Williams III, Donal Logue and Danny Trejo), who are under the mistaken impression that Ben used to work at the local casino and can help serve as tour director during their big Christmas Eve heist.

Reindeer Games is jerry-built on a switchback trail of reversals, revelations, and sputtered, improvised fake outs. It finally pushes its luck in its attempt to get one last twist in before the closing credits; we've read campaign literature from Lyndon LaRouche that makes more sense than this movie's last fifteen minutes. But up until then, this wintry, violent movie offers some good cheap thrills with its adrenaline overload. The cast of supporting baddies are as amusingly sleazy as any collection of movie lowlifes since Frankenheimer's 52 Pick-Up, which also featured Clarence Williams III looking very scary and completely out to lunch. It's a plot-driven movie, but with many diverting moments of local color, such as Danny Trejo thoughtfully laying out his plan to institute a second mid-summer Christmas season to boost the national economy, and Dennis Farina, as the stressed-out wiseguy in charge of the snowbound casino blasting away with a machine gun while calling out, "Hey, Santa, merry Christmas!" All this, plus the fiftieth-smartest guy in Hollywood takes several heavy blows to the face. Ho ho ho!

— Phil Nugent

The Ten Greatest Prosthetics in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Nicole Kidman's Nose in THE HOURS (2002)

Can a fake nose win an Oscar? Some might say it already did, when Nicole Kidman's turn as Virginia Woolf in The Hours was awarded the golden statue for Best Actress. We've got nothing against Kidman's performance in that film, but judging by the reams of press that her lightly reoriented schnozz got at the time, you'd think that it was the nose that was wearing Kidman, instead of the other way around. Of course, this was yet another award in a long series of Best Actress Oscars that went to Beautiful Women Doing Unglamorous Things — whether it was playing a tarted-up legal secretary (Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich), having sex with Billy Bob Thornton (Halle Berry in Monster's Ball) or looking like a burn victim (Charlize Theron in Monster). Which is, really, the only way we can explain Kidman's decision to use such a subtle prosthetic in the first place; it's not like the American moviegoing public had any idea what Virginia Woolf looked like in the first place.

Jeff Goldblum's Jaw, Cheeks, Eyes, His Very Fucking Being, in THE FLY (1986)

Some of us were prohibited from watching more than two hours of TV a week as children. Luckily, some of us were also latch-key kids, so naturally, whenever no one was home, we gorged, often on both food and shlocky afternoon TV movies. And those of us who were unlucky enough to see The Fly at this time didn't quite grasp the extent of our mistake until it was too late. There you are, happily eating your delivery pizza, and in the middle of a big, meaty bite, you're confronted by the spectacle of one of Brundlefly's eyes falling off, like an egg yolk dripping into batter. You assume that's the most disgusting scene they're gonna throw at you. Again, big mistake. Jeff Goldblum's Brundlefly is possibly the single most hideous, repugnant creature ever seen on film — worse than the Alien mother, worse than any other close competitor. Every negative trait of Jeff Goldblum's physiognomy is brought into stark relief onto an insect face; when it decays, we dare you to keep eating. We certainly didn't.

Penelope Cruz's Ass, VOLVER (2006)

Since her Hollywood debut, Cruz has been the poster child for foreign-born performers who aren't half as compelling in English as they are in their native tongue. Which is why her reunion with Pedro Almodovar was a cause for celebration — not only would she be working in Spanish again, but she was collaborating with a filmmaker who always brought out the best in her. But strangely enough, much of the buzz around Penelope's role in 2006's Volver focused less on the performance than around the generous fake derrière she strapped on for the role. According to Almodovar, the padded rump was necessary for the character, an earthy, hard-working mother in the Anna Magnani tradition, and this makes sense, since Penelope Cruz is lovely, but talk about bun cakes — she ain't got 'em. But then a funny thing happened. Instead of drawing undue attention to Penelope's prodigious prosthetic posterior, the hype allowed moviegoers to grow accustomed to the sight of the suddenly callipygian Cruz, much in the same way Alejandro Amenabar leaked stills of a heavily made-up Javier Bardem to the Spanish press so the public would get used to his appearance in The Sea Inside. The gimmick paid off in the end, as Cruz's full-bodied (sorry) performance made the rockin' world go 'round, garnering her unprecedented critical praise and a rare (for a foreign-language performer) Best Actress Oscar nomination. In fact, after the success of Volver, the only question that remains for Penelope Cruz's career is: how can she leave this behind?

Vincent Gallo's Penis in THE BROWN BUNNY (2003)

When people actually got around to seeing Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny rather than just making fun of it (which isn't to say that they stopped making fun of it afterwards, or that many people actually got around to seeing it), the scene that generated the most buzz was what is delicately referred to as "the blowjob", where Gallo's lodge pole is climbed by Chloe Sevigny, for whom one has never felt more pity. The scene's verite qualities and (literally) naked emotional power are what most people talked about, although we think they were just grateful that something was actually happening in the movie after endless shots of Gallo driving aimlessly across country. Gallo, who tends to be pretty sensitive about things like this, has always claimed that the hog in question belongs to him; French director Claire Denis, on the contrary, claims that it is an artificial wang, and that, worse yet, it isn't even Vince's artificial wang — she says he stole it off the set of her 2001 film Trouble Every Day, in which he had a large part, but not that large part. In the absence of, er, concrete evidence from Gallo, we're going to go with Claire Denis' version of events; we figure that since she's not on record as hoping Roger Ebert gets cancer for giving one of her films a bad review, she's got the moral high ground.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Body in SHALLOW HAL (2001)

Hollywood's relationship with the overweight isn't exactly a history of sensitivity and kindness. Particularly where women are concerned, the mere suggestion of being a few pounds beyond anorexic means you're virtually unemployable; and in a city where people like Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore and Britney Spears can be attacked in the press for being fat, roles for actual human women, let alone fat women, are few and far between. When the Farrelly brothers decided to make a movie about a shallow womanizer who falls in love with a 300-pound woman to prove that he can see 'inner beauty,' they had a casting decision to make: hire two people to play Rosemary Shanahan — one a beautiful, thin Hollywood blonde, to portray Hal's perception of her, and one a genuine 300-pound actress to portray the 'real' character — or just stick Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit? (It didn't help the whole unpleasant aftertaste of the movie that its male lead was Jack Black, an actor who gets romantic leads despite his own flabby physique; no actress with a body like Black's would ever nail down a leading-lady part.) Perhaps it's too much to expect anything like insight from filmmakers whose reputation is built on the gross-out comedy, but the fat suit is already a ethical minefield (representing, as it does, a sort of physical proof of Hollywood's allergy to hiring anyone genuinely overweight to appear in a prominent role) without filling it with an actress who probably weighed 110 pounds soaking wet when she was filming the role.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Willem Dafoe's Teeth in WILD AT HEART (1990)

The whole world seems to be rotting in David Lynch's nightmare road movie, and nowhere is this clearer than in the misbegotten mouth of white-trash villain Bobby Peru, played by Willem Dafoe in full-moon mode. Unholy, irredeemable, and defiantly unflossed, Bobby Peru is meant to be the ultimate dark void awaiting the young lovers at the end of their road to nowhere, and no Satanic movie character ever displayed a less welcoming smile. Perverse to the end, the still-smiling Bobby finally slides a shotgun beneath his chin and blows his own head off, after which the part of his body above the gum line must have felt a certain amount of relief.

Goldie Hawn's Fat in DEATH BECOMES HER (1992)

In this special-effects comedy, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play lifelong rivals who achieve "undead" immortality and spend the rest of the movie blowing holes in each other, twisting each other's necks into pretzels, knocking their heads into their chest cavities, and generally behaving as if Chuck Jones were their stunt coordinator. But the most effective physical mutation in the picture may come when Hawn slips into an old-fashioned fat suit and layers of latex makeup to depict her character's depressive obesity after Streep has waltzed off with her fiancee. Nothing in the movie is funnier than Hawn's expression of malicious satisfaction, with her features sunk deep in the mass of her cream puff head, as she imagines raining destruction down on her gal pal. At the time, Hawn was forty-six years old and had spent a quarter of a century doing her damndest to hang onto the body and mannerisms of a teenage girl. Maybe she felt wickedly giddy at even pretending to have let herself go.

Dennis Hopper's False Leg in RIVER'S EDGE (1987)

Dennis Hopper, fresh from his comeback in Blue Velvet, lays claim to the being the counterculture's answer to Walter Brennan in this generation-gap study of alienated youth. John Heard made a good grab for the position in Cutter's Way, where he staggered around pretending to be one-legged and wore an eye patch to boot, but that was nothing compared to what you get when you equip Hopper with an artificial leg, an inflatable sex doll, and the name "Feck", and sit back to watch him rock. When Hopper, who deals dope to the local teenagers, sits down to remove his false leg, it symbolizes the loss of his own youthful innocence and the disconnect between the older characters and the young people, which is fed by their use of his own product. Or something like that. And did we mention that his character's name is Feck!?

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov