The Screengrab : chevy chase

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

WILL FERRELL AS RICKY BOBBY IN TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (2006)

Will Ferrell’s Anchorman may be more absurd, but Talladega Nights is still the SNL alum’s greatest big-screen achievement to date, a NASCAR-set bit of lunacy that mocks American culture while simultaneously exhibiting fondness for it. Via the character of Ricky Bobby, a nitwit car-racing star, Ferrell manages to send up our national gluttony and materialism, as well as Southern political and social conservatism, with a no-holds-barred goofiness that’s nonetheless underscored by affection for his redneck milieu and its inhabitants. To keep things evenhanded, Sacha Baron Cohen’s aggressively homosexual French F-1 champ Jean Girard provides a hilarious caricature of liberalism. It’s Ferrell’s titular clown, however, that truly embodies the film’s fair-minded attitude, his Ricky Bobby an egotistical good ol’ boy whose jingoism is as inane as his predilection for saying grace to the baby Jesus – an extended bit that gets funnier with every subsequent viewing – and yet whose me-first ridiculousness is laced with a childish kindness that makes him both an embarrassing and endearing personification of 21st century southern America. (NS)

CHEVY CHASE AS CLARK GRISWOLD IN CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989)

While the original remains the most popular, and European Vacation is probably the funniest, the Vacation series’ most heartwarming entry was 1989’s Yuletide saga, in large part because its holiday setting provided Chevy Chase with the best opportunities to convey not only Clark Griswold’s buffoonery, but to root that silliness in his deep, abiding love of family and tradition. In this second sequel, Clark’s homestead is invaded by parents, in-laws and the clan of Cousin Eddy (Randy Quaid), and this raft of supporting players – which also comes to include the Griswold’s prissy Yuppie neighbors (Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) – helps take some of the comedic burden off of Chase. Despite surrounding him with talented co-stars, however, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’s spotlight nonetheless remains squarely on its headliner, whose pratfall skills are in fine form, and whose sympathetic embodiment of his well-intentioned doofus patriarch – aggravated by his kin, disappointed over not receiving the work bonus he was counting on, and tormented by a squirrel let loose in his abode – lends the manic, messy proceedings real warmth. (NS)

PAUL REUBENS AS PEE-WEE HERMAN IN PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985)

Too much fun in a porn theater may have destroyed Paul Reubens' career – and, consequently, the life of his iconic Pee-Wee Herman character – but his 1985 big-screen debut, helmed by first-time director Tim Burton, stands up as a perfectly realized idiosyncratic original. In this fanciful, carnival-esque saga, Reubens' strange-talking man-child Pee-Wee embarks on a cross-country odyssey to recover his beloved red bike, which he believes was stolen by his rich, spoiled, nasty neighbor Francis (Mark Holton). Even on his first feature, Burton’s flair for crafting strange, wild, wondrous visions was in full effect, as was Danny Elfman’s aptitude for offbeat scores. Nonetheless, it’s Pee-Wee who cements his place in the film-comedy pantheon. From the colorful, gadgety confines of his home (where he chows down on some Mr. T breakfast cereal), to the Alamo (whose basement he foolishly hopes to investigate), to a roadside bar where he famously displays his dance moves while surrounded by a horde of nasty-looking bikers, Pee-Wee proves himself a one-of-a-kind weirdo whose irrepressible cheer is infectious, and whose childlike innocence is endearing. (NS)

ALBERT BROOKS AS ALBERT BROOKS IN REAL LIFE (1979)

Albert Brooks has built a career – and a pretty fine one, if you ask us – out of portraying himself as a complete jerkoff. Even when he’s not playing a fictional character who’s kind of a schmuck, he’s kind of a schmuck: the “Albert Brooks” he plays in his films is a rampaging egomaniac who’s completely oblivious to how he comes across to people. Nowhere is this better realized than in his first full-length feature as a writer and director, 1979’s Real Life. This criminally underseen comedy, which brilliantly anticipates the reality-TV craze of 20 years later, sees Brooks playing himself as a desperate-to-please filmmaker who decides to film a normal, average American family; the comedy lies in the fact that he quickly assesses that the moviegoing public will be bored stiff by normality and averageness, and immediately sets about interfering with their lives for entertainment value. Unsurprisingly, this ruins the experiment, and starts to ruin the family’s life as well – but right up until the very end (where he hits upon the brilliant idea of burning their house down in order to provide his disastrous movie with a suitably exciting ending), Brooks is completely blind to the fact that the only thing wrong with his movie is that he’s the one making it. “Albert Brooks”, as portrayed by Albert Brooks, is so fine a portrait of a self-absorbed Hollywood phony it must have made Robert Evans blush.

CHICO MARX AS BARAVELLI IN HORSE FEATHERS (1932)

Although we’ve chosen his role as Baravelli in the campus comedy Horse Feathers as representative, it’s really just a stand-in for any Chico Marx performance. In the Marx Brothers’ films, Groucho’s role was to be the anarchist, the fly in the ointment, the wild card who refused to play by society’s rules and hilariously wrecks the smooth running order of things; Chico’s role was to do the same thing – only to Groucho. Often stereotyped as the dimwitted punster, Chico’s roles went far deeper than that: he was a true comic foil to his younger brother, reminding him that he couldn’t always win, that there was always someone there who could outhustle even the great Groucho – even if it was by playing dumb. Groucho was the subversive riddle that brought down authority, and Harpo was the dynamite bomb thrown right in the middle of the room, but Chico was a Chinese finger puzzle: it looked so simple, but once you were caught in it, no matter how smart you were, you couldn’t get out. Nowhere is that more clear than in the famous “Tutti Frutti” scene in Horse Feathers, where a supremely confident Chico prevents a slow-burning Groucho from betting on the horse he wants to win. It’s one of the greatest examples of pure comic timing ever captured on film.

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

Contributors: Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

Screengrab Review: Watchmen (Paul's Take)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday's Hits: The Santa Clause (1994, John Pasquin)

Paul Clark — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Well, it’s the holidays again, and that means that Christmas movies are back in season. But while Christmas movies have long been an annual tradition, in the last few decades the market for new holiday-themed classics has grown by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when scruffy little movies like A Christmas Story would do decent business in theatres only to become classics on video and cable. Today, Christmas movies are big business, and rare is the big budget holiday movie that doesn’t clean up at the box office. For my next three Yesterday’s Hits columns, I’ll be taking a new look at three of the biggest holiday hits of all time, to get you all in the spirit of the season. This week, I’ll begin with the 1994 blockbuster The Santa Clause.

The Santa Clause came after nearly a decade of Christmas movies that shied away from dealing with Santa Claus. While this might seem odd nowadays, there was a good reason for this at the time- 1985’s Santa Claus: The Movie was a massive flop, scaring the studios into making less fantasy-based holiday movies in the years to come. But by the mid-1990s, Disney decided it was time to bring back the jolly old elf, and The Santa Clause served up St. Nick with a twist on the old tale. After several established movie stars (Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, to name two) turned down the role, Disney turned to the star of the hugely popular sitcom Home Improvement, a former standup comedian named Tim Allen. The combination of Christmas and Allen’s big-screen leading man debut proved as irresistible to audiences as milk and cookies, and The Santa Clause became the biggest hit of fall 1994, spawning two sequels and propelling Allen to movie stardom.

The premise of the film certainly helped. Rather than beginning with its main character born as Santa, The Santa Clause took the novel approach of having its protagonist Scott Calvin (played by Allen) more or less inherit the job. In the film, if something happens to the current Santa, the next person to don the suit takes his place, with all of the side effects that implies. The Santa Clause’s best sequence takes place right after Scott finds himself thrust into the role of Kris Kringle, when we discover through his eyes the perils of the job- snarling dogs, home security systems, gifts that are too big to fit under the tree. And while Scott predictably finds himself turning physically into Santa, gaining 45 pounds in a week and growing a long white beard in a matter of minutes, the sight gags are fairly enjoyable nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn’t as much fun as the Santa material. Scott’s life in the temperate latitudes includes a well-paying job as a toy company executive and an ex-wife Laura (Wendy Crewson), with whom he shares custody of their young son Charlie (Eric Lloyd). Naturally, Charlie is jazzed about his dad being Santa, but of course none of the other adults believe his stories of when they visited the North Pole and went around delivering gifts. Laura’s new husband Neil (Judge Reinhold) just happens to be a psychiatrist, and he quickly concludes that Charlie is having trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy, and that Scott with his physical changes is feeding his son’s delusions in order to look better in Charlie’s eyes. The resulting plot developments are too contrived to be effective, and they’re exacerbated by Reinhold’s awful performance, in which he comes off less as a competent doctor than someone who’s suffered a recent blow to the head.

Ever since Charles Dickens penned A Christmas Carol more than 160 years ago, there has been a fairly standard trajectory for Christmas stories and, later, Christmas movies- a character, or group of characters, overcome their self-centered ways by discovering the meaning of Christmas. Even Bad Santa’s Willie, the most dissolute of recent Christmas movie protagonists, ended up finding some member of the Christmas spirit through his unlikely mentorship of a (very strange) kid. The Santa Clause was directed by John Pasquin, who had previously worked with Allen when he directed numerous episodes of Home Improvement, and the movie feels and looks like a big-screen sitcom, with some easy laughs and nothing offensive to scare away audiences. Like most Christmas movies, it’s an okay way to take a break from holiday shopping or entertain visiting relatives. But as a movie, it’s really nothing special.

Morning Deal Report: Cheech and Chong Re-Lit

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Wake and bake! Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are reuniting for a concert film. "The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie will lense in March during a San Antonio stop on the 'Light Up America' tour, which kicked off Sept. 26. Tour, their first together in at least 25 years, will continue well into 2009," Variety reports.

Chevy Chase, Burt Reynolds, Vinnie Jones, Michael Madsen and "Stuttering" John Melendez…I should just stop there, shouldn’t I? But wait – it gets better. The abovementioned luminaries will star in Not Another Not Another Movie. "Chase plays a studio head who quits his floundering company, leaving his ex-con sibling (Madsen) in charge. Soon their equally inept gangster friend (Jones) takes over and assigns a production assistant (David Leo Schultz) to direct a spoof of spoof movies. Reynolds plays an actor playing the director of the chaotic film within the film," The Hollywood Reporter explains.

Those of us who found Counting Crows to be the most humorless band of the ‘90s are surprised to learn that Crows lead singer Adam Duritz is teaming with comedy troupe Broken Lizard (Super Troopers, Beerfest) for Freeloaders. "Story revolves around five guys and a girl who live in the lap of luxury in a rock star's mansion. But their sweet situation is threatened when the rock star decides to sell the home," per Variety.

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Take Five: Road Trip

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Opening this Friday, Neil Burger's The Lucky Ones is a bit of a gamble as a follow-up to The Illusionist. Following the plight of three soldiers recently returned from Iraq (played by Tim Robbins, Michael Pena and Rachel McAdams), it quickly turns into a sort of social statement-cum-sign o' the times story as they find themselves on a road trip together across the country. It's hard to predict how The Lucky Ones will be received; Iraq movies are always a crapshoot, and the movie's curious blend of comedy and drama may not fit in with the subject matter. But it's always fun to see a new road movie, especially this late in the year when the possibility taking real-world road trips becomes more and more daunting. Road pictures have a long and storied history in Hollywood, and filmmakers have managed to fold everything from bone-chilling noir to high-concept comedy to existential drama into the format. America is especially adept at making road pictures, not only because of the grand canvas that is the national geography, but because of our total immersion in car culture. Here's five of our favorites.

DETOUR (1945)

Film noir, despite its association with the urban environment, was never afraid to take its show on the road as long as there was a nice juicy crime at the center of the story, and Detour serves up a doozy. A grade-z Poverty Row picture made for the cost of Clark Gable's lunch, Detour nonetheless proved to be one of the most effective noir films of its day, thanks to its relentless, grubby energy. Tom Neal, who starts the picture looking like he's had his insides scooped out and just gets worse from there, plays a sad-sack piano player who just wants to get to the west coast so he can be united with his former flame. But along the way he gets framed for murder after running afoul of Ann Savage in one of the most terrifying femme fatale roles of all time. A terrific, unsparingly bleak little film that proves a little can go a long way.

ROAD TO UTOPIA (1946)

The term "road picture" was more or less invented to describe the handful of movies made in the 1940s to showcase the comedic talents of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby team. The movies, which always featured the boys making an arduous comic trek to some picaresque location, were of varied quality, but were alway huge moneymakers. The last of these was the best; it featured Hope and Crosby (accompanied, as always, by Dorothy Lamour) as turn-of-the-century con artists heading to Alaska to strike gold. That was just the set-up, though, for one of the most anarchic comedies of the decade; scanning more like a Marx Brothers movie, Road to Utopia featured in-jokes, metahumor, wordplay, surreal gags, and even some inexplicable albeit hilarious voice-overs by master humorist Robert Benchley.

TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

A beloved film among your loyal Screengrab scribes, Monte Hellman's throat-clutching existential race movie Two Lane Blacktop opened to great praise and almost as quickly faded out of existence. It's not hard to see why: for all its greatness, it's a remarkably strange little flick, curiously aimless despite its implacable velocity, with characters who are little more than cyphers, as much as they intrigue us. Two of its 'stars', James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, basically never acted again, and Warren Oates turns in a performance -- as the impenetrable, self-inventing G.T.O., named after his car -- that's bizarre even weighed against his filmography. Still, it's probably the pinnacle of the road movie as metaphor for existence, and once seen, it's never forgotten. A real underground classic that's finally gotten its due.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (1983)

Nowadays, the presence of the National Lampoon imprint is practically a guarantee that a movie is going to be a colossal pile of shit. There are those of us old enough to remember how lucky we were back in the days when only the next installment of the venerable National Lampoon's Vacation franchise was going to be a piece of shit, but even for us old cranks, it does us good to remember that the original was actually a pretty solid ensemble comedy. Directed by a still-fresh Harold Ramis, written by John Hughes (who adapted his own story, with surprisingly few changes, from the old NatLamp magazine), and starring Chevy Chase when "starring Chevy Chase" was a preferable alternative to suicide, Vacation has held up surprisingly well, both on its own merits and as, essentially, the blueprint for every road comedy since.

BROKEN FLOWERS (2005)

Even for fans of Jim Jarmusch -- a group of which I am a proud member -- there was a lot not to like about Broken Flowers. Though the music, by Ethiopian jazzman Mulatu Astaque, was fantastic, it felt like it was driving the aimless plot, and the hip-music-plays-as-America-flashes-on-the-windshield device was getting a bit tired. Bill Murray's aging sad sack character was becoming less of a revelation and more of a routine. The incomprehensible ethnic as source of boundless wisdom device was wearing thin. All in all, parts of Broken Flowers played like a pardoy of Jarmusch rather than the real thing. But the parts that worked, including some stunning acting by the movie's female leads and the whole road-trip-to-nowhere angle which Jarmusch has done so well before, remind you why you put up with the parts that don't.

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Morning Deal Report: Hilary Duff Stays Cool

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:30:00 GMT

We’ve all heard of coming-of-age comedies, but a “knowing-your-age” comedy is a new one on us. That’s how the Hollywood Reporter describes Stay Cool, the latest project from the Polish brothers (Northfork). Hilary Duff has joined the cast that already includes Winona Ryder and Chevy Chase (!) in the story of “a successful author (Mark Polish) who is forced to confront an unrequited high school crush (Ryder) when he returns home to deliver a commencement address to graduating seniors. Duff will portray Shasta O'Neil, a sexy high school senior who flirts with the visiting author and invites him to the prom.” Great, now Hollywood is stealing ideas from my dreams.

Let’s head on over to Salvation Boulevard, an adaptation of an upcoming mystery novel by Larry Beinhart (author of American Hero, which became Wag the Dog). Per Variety, the story “revolves around a private detective who investigates the killing of a professor. The exercise proves to be a clash of faiths: The detective is a born-again Christian, the dead man an atheist, the accused killer an Islamic foreign student and the D.A. is Jewish.” Sounds like the setup to a George Carlin routine, but the most intriguing element of the project is the director, George Ratliff. Ratliff is probably best known for his fire-and-brimstone documentary Hell House, but the real gem in his filmography is the now ultra-rare Plutonium Circus, about the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Amarillo, TX. Track down a copy if you can.

Finally, isn’t it about time for a comedy about the dawn of the Internet porn era? Oxymoron Entertainment agrees, so their first feature will be Middle Men, co-written and directed by George Gallo (Midnight Run). The script concerns “a straight-and-narrow businessman brought into a world that would eventually turn into a multibillion-dollar industry,” according to Variety.

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The 12 Greatest Movies Based on TV Shows, Part II

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

THE FUGITIVE (1993)

The Fugitive might not have been the first TV series remade for the big screen, but it was almost certainly the one that proved how bankable- and even respectable- such adaptations could be. The film took as its inspiration one of the most influential series of its day, a four-season cat-and-mouse story of an escaped, convicted killer out to clear his name. While The Fugitive remains true to the spirit of the series, director Andrew Davis and his screenwriters do so in a way that reconfigures the formula for the big screen, beginning with a famous, still-impressive bus crash. The film also benefits from placing nearly equal emphasis on the pursued Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) as it does on pursuer, U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerrard (Tommy Lee Jones, who in a rare display of Academy affection for a genre performance won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar). The Fugitive also has a sense of place that’s rare for a big-budget thriller, utilizing Chicago so perfectly that the story becomes unimaginable in any other setting. But the best scenes in the film are the ones that remain truest to their television inspirations, specifically the near-miss suspense sequences in which Kimble barely manages to evade capture through a combination of luck and formidable intelligence. Of all the TV adaptations up to that time, it was The Fugitive that showed that films of this kind, when done right, could be much more than a simple grab for nostalgia-driven box office, and in doing so became more or less the standard by which big-budget TV-to-film translations are judged.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)

Yes, really. A huge hit on its original release, Mission: Impossible was mostly dismissed by critics as a dopey Tom Cruise action movie, while being criticized by many viewers for having too much plot, not enough stuff blowing up. But a second look at the film reveals what a gripping suspense movie it really is, translating the formula of the TV series- gadgets, undercover missions, realistic masks, and the like- into the form of a summer tentpole release. Mission: Impossible contains at least three or four wonderfully tense scenes- the opening operation gone fatally wrong, the tête-à-tête at Prague’s Akvarium, that awesome Rififi-esque break-in at Langley- more than most Hollywood thrillers can claim. In addition, the film represents the most successful attempt by director Brian DePalma to fuse the silky-smooth cinema-saturated style of his most characteristic work with a big-budget blockbuster, and in the process becomes a surprisingly lean and satisfying thriller. If nothing else, Mission: Impossible deserves respect as the only film in the series to date that’s remained true to the team-centric nature of the show, with subsequent efforts becoming increasingly focused on Tom Cruise saving the world. Supporting players like Jon Voight, Vanessa Redgrave and Henry Czerny make such a strong impression here that it’s a shame that Cruise has become so intent on hogging the spotlight in later films in the franchise.

THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980)

Netflix, video stores and pay cable movie channels are littered with the toxic waste spew of that very special category of cinematic detritus: the SNL movie. Sure, the never-as-funny-as-it-should-be/ never-as-bad-as-its-rep Saturday Night Live has produced more than its share of legitimate comedy stars and second bananas over the years, from Chevy Chase and Bill Murray to Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. But one-dimensional SNL characters, barely tolerable in five minute doses, can be downright unbearable in full-length features (i.e., It’s Pat, A Night At the Roxbury, Coneheads, etc.). Wayne’s World is one notable exception, but to my way of thinking, The Blues Brothers is far and away the best of the SNL films (and, for the purposes of this list, one of my favorite TV-to-movie adaptations), transforming a recurring, ego-driven musical duo (whose routine and appeal I never really understood) into iconic figures in a John Landis/John Belushi/Dan Akroyd phantasmagoria that bends over backwards in its efforts to entertain: car crashes! cast-of-thousands musical numbers! more car crashes! Illinois Nazis! country and western! rhythm and blues! John Candy! Aretha Franklin! Carrie Fisher with a machine gun! (And did I mention the car crashes?) I mean, fuck! The endless, mind-boggling demolition-derby pile-up of police cars in the climactic car chase alone is worth the price of admission (take that, CGI!), but the musical numbers (by Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, et. al.) are even better, and introduced me and countless other white people to a whole bunch of talented black people we’d never fully appreciated before. And if all that weren’t enough, The Blues Brothers is endlessly quotable (“We’re on a mission from God,” “Three orange whips,” etc.) and spawned a pretty damn tasty jambalaya at the late-lamented Cambridge House of Blues...and how many movies can you say that about? True, The Blues Brothers also spawned the execrable Blues Brothers 2000...but the original, indispensable 1980 version will forever stand as the Cadillac Ranch of movies, a bizarre, fascinating, coke-fueled white elephant at the crossroads of cracked genius and howling oblivion.

HEAD (1968)

It was 1968 and the studio chiefs were very confused. There was something called “youth culture” or “the counterculture” or whatever – you know, dirty smelly hippies who wanted to see weird shit at the movies! Hopelessly out of touch, these suits had to turn to the scruffy people for help. The kids seemed to like that TV show The Monkees, so Columbia Pictures hired the show’s producer Bob Rafelson, and he teamed with that really weird Jack Nicholson dude from the Corman pictures, and they smoked a bunch of weed and they came up with Head. Surreal, satirical, self-referential, psychedelic and pretty much plotless, the movie bore little resemblance to the kiddie show that spawned it and failed at the box office. In retrospect, it never had a chance; the heads wouldn’t be caught dead seeing a Monkees movie and the young fans of the show wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of it. But there’s enough inspired weirdness, bizarre cameos (Annette Funicello, Frank Zappa, Victor Mature and Sonny Liston) and good music (notably the Michael Nesmith-composed “Circle Sky”) to make it a worthy cult object, if not a great movie.

THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! (1988)

The Naked Gun has very little competition as the least likely TV-to-movie transition of all time. It’s derived from a series that only yours truly and four other people watched, one that lasted six episodes and went off the air six years before the movie reached theaters. But Police Squad! had a pedigree; the Airplane! team of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker created it, star Leslie Nielsen was nominated for an Emmy for his deadpan turn as Lt. Frank Drebin, and the show became a cult favorite through reruns and home video. Even so, The Naked Gun was an unexpected smash hit, spawning two lousy sequels and an entire craptacular genre of Leslie Nielsen parodies. Don’t hold those sins against it, though. The Naked Gun is a well-oiled laugh machine – from the slapstick stylings of the always hilarious O.J. Simpson to the climactic baseball game honored in an earlier Screengrab list, it’s like a MAD magazine come to life, complete with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it marginalia crammed into every corner of the screen. It’s really the last time Nielsen was ever funny, and that goes triple for the ZAZ triumvirate, who have separately and together foisted the likes of Brain Donors, Rat Race and Scary Movie 4 on their once loyal fans.

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992)

The second and final season of Twin Peaks ended in a flurry of bizarre cliffhangers, so when rumors of a movie began to circulate, those few of us who were still watching shared a brief moment of hope that at least some resolution would be forthcoming. Then we heard that Fire Walk with Me would be a prequel covering the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life and, well, so much for that idea. Presumably the reasoning was that a reboot of the story would draw in a larger audience than a continuation, or at least that’s how we imagine David Lynch explained it to the suits at New Line. It’s a safe bet that 99% of any potential new audience fled the theater within the movie’s first 30 minutes, set in a deliberately alienating bizarro Twin Peaks called Deer Meadow, where the cops are unfriendly, the waitresses are hags and the FBI is represented by Chris Isaak as a pale echo of Kyle MacLachlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper. (MacLachlan makes only fleeting appearances in the movie, unaware that his career is Showgirls-bound.) But those who left early missed out on one of Lynch’s most intense and emotionally charged fever dreams. Stripped of the quirky humor that had soured into tiresome shtick long before the series ended, Fire Walk with Me unwraps Laura Palmer from her plastic for a one-of-a-kind descent into hell. Sheryl Lee burns through the screen in a shoulda-been star-making performance and Lynch cooks up some of his most indelible set pieces, most notably the subtitled “Pink Room” sequence set in what appears to be Satan’s roadhouse. Just don’t ask us about the David Bowie cameo.

- Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak

READ PART I

DVD Digest for March 11, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week finds the recently-anointed Best Picture Oscar winner coming to DVD, as well as some long-overlooked genre offerings, adrift of sea of junk both old and new. In other words, sort of like every week here at DVD Digest.

DVD of the week: What else could it be but No Country for Old Men (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray)? The film's DVD contains some interesting-looking featurette, including a making-of with the Coens, but the primary reason I'm including it here is because when a legitimately great film is honored with the Best Picture Oscar, it's a cause for celebration. Say what you will about the falling fortunes of the Academy Awards, but the Oscar name still means something to people, and the award should bring No Country a bigger home-viewing audience than it would have had otherwise. Yes, I realize there will almost certainly be a super-deluxe edition of the film in six months or so, one which will hopefully include an Easter egg of Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go. But especially in a relatively slow week for DVD (no major box sets, no Criterions), I'd say the arrival of No Country in home-viewing form constitutes an event.

In other new releases, this week brings Paramount's tiresomely overhyped Bee Movie; Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche in Dan in Real Life (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); the John Woo-wannabe Hitman (Fox, also Blu-Ray); August Rush (Warner, also Blu-Ray); the misbegotten Caine/Law/Branagh remake of Sleuth; last summer's largely forgotten updating of Nancy Drew (Warner); and the anime DVD Appleseed Ex Machina (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

On the classics front, the week's big news is the three new titles in Fox's ever-growing selection of film noir on DVD: Ginger Rogers in Black Widow, Jeanne Crain in Dangerous Passage, and Joan Crawford and Henry Fonda in Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon. Daisy Kenyon in particular has enjoyed a critical resurgence during the past year, and I'm eager to check it out now that it's finally available again. Other titles of note include the Al Pacino double feature of ...And Justice For All and Bobby Deerfield (both Sony), and a new special edition of Gattaca (Sony, also Blu-Ray). The week's Blu-Ray-only releases include Dogma (Sony), I, Robot (Fox), and Independence Day (Fox).

Finally, David Huddleston offers his condolences to the following HD-DVD releases:

Bee Movie (Paramount)
In the Valley of Elah (Warner)
Michael Clayton (Warner)
Fletch (Universal)

I don't know about you, but $20 seems a lot to pay for what will likely be used as a Fletch drink coaster in a few months' time. Although if you use it to hold your Bloody Mary while you eat a steak sandwich and a steak sandwich, perhaps it'll be worth it to you.

Ten Movies for a Snow Day

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It’s that time of the year when Screengrab readers in certain parts of the country can pretty much count on an unexpected day off or two thanks to Mother Nature’s fury. In my part of the country (Austin, TX), said fury usually comes in the form of about a half-inch of freezing drizzle, but having grown up in the Northeast, I am certainly well acquainted with the concept of the Snow Day. And what could be better on a day when you can’t leave the house than a pile of movies featuring a veritable blizzard’s worth of snow?

Herewith, then, the Screengrab’s list of the ten snowiest movies. Please note that we have not included the Chevy Chase/Chris Elliott movie Snow Day. We wouldn’t do that to you.

Ice Station Zebra

Sure, for much of its running time, this much-maligned Rock Hudson vehicle is a submarine movie, but the climactic scenes are set at the Arctic Circle, where the crew has been sent to track down some important Cold War whatsis. In his 1969 review, Roger Ebert describes the action thusly: “Hudson and his men start out with parkas, mufflers, goggles and the whole works. But by the time of the confrontation with the Russian commander, all the leading actors are shown bareheaded and barefaced. At Arctic temperatures, their noses would freeze, crack and fall off before they got their argument well launched. Another funny thing: When the actors talk, their breath doesn't freeze.”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

There are several Bond movies that explore the action-packed possibilities of snow, notably For Your Eyes Only, but when in doubt we always opt for the golden age of Lazenby. Here 007 puts his skis to work both on the slopes (dig that nighttime rear-screen projection) and as weapons of strangulation and defenestration. Always a multi-tasker, our man Bond.

Quintet

I’ve written about Robert Altman’s frostbitten foray into post-apocalyptic sci-fi before, so to quote myself: “Set in a future Ice Age, Quintet is so white with snow and glare, you will notice streaks of dust on your television screen that were hitherto imperceptible. To give it that extra ‘futuristic’ edge, Altman has smeared his camera lens with enough lube to fuel a three-day orgy at Elliott Gould’s place.” Stare at it long enough and you will go blind, one way or another.

The Shining

Sure, a snow day sounds like all fun and games. But then you realize you’re trapped in the house with your family for who knows how long, and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets a bad case of cabin fever and starts chasing you around with an axe. Our advice? Lead them outside into the hedge maze. This works best if they’re drunk and/or completely insane.

Fargo

Forget the compelling argument about whether or not the Coens have contempt for their heroine Marge Gunderson. What we really want to know is – what do they think of this guy?

Alive

This is an especially good one to watch from the safety of your couch on your unplanned day off. See what leaving the house gets you? Before you know it, you’ve crash-landed in the snow-capped Andes and the seatmate you bummed a magazine from early in the flight is now gnawing on your elbow. Better take an extra day off tomorrow just to be on the safe side.

A Simple Plan

From the golden age of snow noir (approx. Feburary 1996 to December 1998) comes Sam Raimi’s adaptation of the Scott Smith novel about earflapped yokels squabbling over a sack o’ cash rescued from another crashed plane. If you’re only familiar with the recent work of Billy Bob Thornton, it might surprise you to learn he once played characters who weren’t hard-assed authority figures. To wit:

Dreamcatcher

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this list contains two movies based on Stephen King books, since the horrormeister is a native of Maine and therefore no stranger to the perils of wintry weather. Of course, in Dreamcatcher those perils include ass-weasels from outer space and Morgan Freeman’s equally extraterrestrial eyebrows, so this one doesn’t qualify as the most naturalistic look at snowbound life on this list.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Honestly, you can skip Quintet if you want. McCabe is the Altman masterpiece you must move to the head of your Netflix queue immediately. And if you’ve never seen it, do not – repeat DO NOT – watch the clip below.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow

It’s been a while, but as best we can recall, this movie did not make a lick of sense. Julia Ormond is a scientist investigating a conspiracy using her unique, uh, sense of snow. Save this one for last, when you’re really tired.