The Screengrab : christopher nolan

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

FAME (1980)

To me, nothing says “ending” like an all-singing, all-dancing grand finale...and while there are dozens of great movie musicals that climax with memorable showstoppers -- from Hairspray’s “You Can’t Stop The Beat” and Hair’s “Let The Sun Shine In” to the painterly tableau of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence at the end of 1776 -- I’ve always had a special place in my heart for “I Sing The Body Electric,” which features most of the major characters from the original 1980 version of Fame (as opposed to all the moist, crappy knock-offs that followed). The number gives me chills every time I hear or see it performed, capturing as it does that terrifying, exhilarating moment of maximum potential when young graduates teeter on the verge of their leap of faith into adulthood. (Plus, it’s nice to see Coco with her shirt back on, none the worse for wear after the icky photo shoot of a few scenes earlier.) (AO)

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981)

Dennis Potter's stylized Depression musical stars Steve Martin as Arthur, a sheet music salesman who thinks he has to believe in the happy songs he peddles to survive the throbbing nightmare is his real life. His ever-escalating flight from reality ultimately leads him to the gallows. The movie ends with his last fantasy, in which he escapes to dance in a production number with the heroine (Bernadette Peters), the only logic behind it being the conviction that no one could suffer so much in life unless it was a set-up for the happy ending to come. It's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" as staged by Hermes Pan. (PN)

MEMENTO (2000)

Christopher Nolan’s calling-card head-scratcher begins with its ending and then works backwards to its start, which one assumes is the traumatic event that bestowed Guy Pearce’s tattooed vigilante with short-term memory loss and propelled him down his vengeful path. What we get instead is something more confounding, a mordant and melancholy conclusion that compels us to consider the relationship between memory and identity and, just as pressingly, forces us to once again reconsider everything about the story we thought to be true. (NS)

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005)

Rob Zombie’s neo-exploitation redneck horror show overflows with disturbing grindhouse violence, highlighted by a motel room kidnapping-torture sequence that’s just plain mean. Yet at the mid-way point of The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie turns the tables on his cop vs. psychos scenario, positing William Forsythe’s lawman as the true sadistic lunatic and the Firefly clan as empathetic antiheroes, a transparent bait-and-switch provocation that culminates in a slow-motion blaze-of-glory finale (set to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” no less) that brazenly thumbs its nose at propriety. (NS)

THE UNFORESEEN (2007)

The most unforeseen conclusion to Laura Dunn's documentary about land development and water rights in and around Austin, TX (which is where I happen to live) came when I wound up sympathizing with the heavy. Even though this guy has defied environmentalists and the civic will, he too has ended up on the sharp and pointy side of his political beliefs, and it feels less like just desserts than even more tragedy. (HC)

THE ORDER OF MYTHS (2008)

I can't tell you the great thing about the ending of The Order Of Myths, because there's always that chance that you haven't seen it, and it would be shameful to spoil the reveal at the end. Let's just say that most of the film proceeds without a narrative voice, allowing the subjects to tell their own story without comment. And yet filmmaker Margaret Brown is always a couple of steps closer to the story she's telling than she lets on at any point up until the end. Her reveal transforms your understanding of the previous 75-odd minutes, a trick that is clever enough in fiction films but downright revelatory in a documentary. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

In Other Blogs: Roger Ebert Contemplates Eternity

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

The weekend is almost here, so let’s turn to our old pal Roger Ebert for some cheery TGIF thoughts. “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris. I don't expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing…I hope not. I have plans.”

Glenn Kenny brings reason to rejoice at Some Came Running: The Friends of Eddie Coyle is finally due out on DVD – in a Criterion edition, no less. “‘Young film fans raised in the multiplex era might look back and lament the fact that no one is making movies like The Friends of Eddie Coyle anymore,’ Kent Jones writes in his exemplary (as usual) essay on the 1973 film, included in the new Criterion DVD of it. ‘The truth is that they never did. There's only this one.’ Robert Mitchum's performance as Eddie, the hangdog, hard-luck crook whose quiet desperation—in this story, he's due to start serving some time in a couple of weeks, and he's just not going to be able to hack it—compels his every move, is a huge part of the film's uniqueness. He underplays like nobody's business, and never announces himself. Not only does the trademark Mitchum smirk never once cross his face—looking at his work here, you'd never believe he had it in the first place.”

At PopMatters, Kit MacFarlane reconsiders Mickey Rourke in Homeboy. “A glum and downbeat boxing film, Homeboy not only anticipates many of the key concerns of the highly-celebrated The Wrestler, but also, by now-obvious extension, the real life trajectory of Rourke himself. But the film fell into the ‘too depressing’ pit on its release, and the presence of standard genre cliches saw it treated dismissively by those who didn’t look close enough to see those same cliches being quietly, but firmly, derailed. Despite the presence of actors like Christopher Walken and Jon Polito, a delicate score by Eric Clapton, and even a fawning reference in Bob Dylan’s Chronicles ("The movie traveled to the moon every time [Rourke] came onto the screen. Nobody could hold a candle to him."), it is rarely mentioned today at all…Too depressing in 1988, Homeboy‘s aura of sorrow now seems too delicate, too nuanced and poetic, next to the sensationalized sledgehammer misery pioneered by today’s hip angst-peddlers like Aronofsky, Todd Solondz, Larry Clark, and Christopher Nolan.”

SmartMoney lists 10 Things Movie Critics Won't Tell You. We’re fond of #7: You probably don’t want to hear this, but you need me. “Want to stir people up? Ask them what they think of movie critics. Jen Davis of Louisville, Ky., is put off by what she sees as a superiority syndrome in the profession. ‘My opinion is just as valid, dammit!’ she says. Tammy Ras of Pascoag, R.I., is more militant: ‘If they say, “Don’t see it, it sucks,” that means, “Go see it, it’s great.”’ Sounds harsh, but the truth is, filmgoers need reviewers. As Salon.com’s Zacharek puts it, ‘Critics are the only thing standing between consumers and advertising.’ With hundreds of films released in theaters each year, ‘Critics are more important now than they ever were,’ she says. ‘There are just so many movies, so much aggressive hype.’”

Finally, it’s not exactly a blog, but The Worst Show on the Web is Blog Talk Radio, and more importantly, the most recent episode features your Screengrabbin’ pals Andrew Osborne and yours truly discussing some films screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival, most notably (and contentiously) My Suicide. Give it a listen here.

Morning Deal Report: Basterds Bound for Cannes

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited World War II epic Inglourious Basterds will have its world premiere at Cannes next month. “The Brad Pitt starrer, set in Nazi-occupied France, has been invited to play in competition at the Cannes Film Festival,” Variety reports. “Insiders said Tarantino, a longtime favorite of the French, has accepted the offer and has told the film's backers -- the Weinstein Co. and Universal Pictures -- that the pic will be ready for its world premiere during the May fest. The movie, which follows a band of Jewish-American soldiers whose mission is to take down a group of Nazis, will bow Aug. 21.”

Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard and Cillian Murphy are all in talks to join Leonardo DiCaprio in Christopher Nolan’s latest, Inception. “DiCaprio's character is mentioned as a CEO-type, while Cotillard would play his wife. Page is a young college grad student and DiCaprio's sidekick,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Inception is the sci-fi thriller “set within the architecture of the mind,” lest we forget.

Barry Sonnenfeld will open The Spellman Files for Paramount Pictures. The adaptation of Lisa Lutz's novel “revolves around a single private eye who has to juggle the demands of running her family's business with her dating life.”

Related:
Trailer Review: Inglourious Basterds
Ellen Page Whips It for Drew Barrymore

Screengrab Presents The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:30:00 GMT

The Best:

GHOST WORLD (2001)

Forget best comic book movies...Terry Zwigoff’s deadpan adaptation of Dan Clowes’ cool blue-black graphic novel (distilled from the bizarre alt-comic Eightball) is one of the best movies of ANY genre to emerge in the past decade. While most of the films on this list are super-powered adolescent wish fulfillment fantasies, Ghost World is a dead-on portrayal of life as it really is for many American teens (as well as the aging misfits some of them...okay, some of us...grow into). Recent high school grads Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson, peaking early in her best role ever) slouch through a dystopic Los Angeles, floating on attitude to keep from drowning in a world of suck...add cranky Steve Buscemi as a hapless, lonely object of affection and you've got a near-perfect black comedy about alienation and the slow death of individualism in America, from the blissful escapism of Enid's private "Jaan Pehechan Ho" Bollywood dance party curtain raiser to her bitter, existential fade-out on a literal road to nowhere.

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

By the time the second of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies came around, no one was seriously questioning the idea that a movie based on a comic book could actually be good. But nobody suspected how good until they’d managed to live through The Dark Knight. Nolan and his brother Jonathan tried to cram a huge amount of story into the movie’s heavy running time, but while it didn’t always work out – the Two-Face plot sagged a bit at the end, and there were moments that would have been better placed in a lesser movie – it justified its length and left you wishing there was even more. A great deal of attention is heaped on Heath Ledger’s terrifying, hypnotic (and Oscar-winning) performance as the Joker, and rightly so; but there’s so much more to the movie than that. The Nolans are always willing to sidestep the traditional conflicts of superhero stories and introduce powerful shades of moral ambiguity, which comes across in spades in The Dark Knight; and while Batman himself is left alone and lost at the edge of right and wrong, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon provides the movie’s true moral center. And, given the numerous ways it manages to transcend simplistic blockbuster-movie tropes, it’s also an amazing-looking movie, with brutal fights, set pieces, and that rarest of things, an exciting and interesting chase scene, all of which helped make it one of the most successful motion pictures in the history of the world.

The Worst:

GHOST RIDER (2007)

I understand why Nic Cage took the lead role in Ghost Rider. It’s because Nic Cage is a hack who will pretty much do anything for money, as evidenced by, oh, let’s say Bangkok Dangerous or any other movie he’s made in the last half-decade. He’s also a major comic book geek (his son’s name is Kal-El, for Christ’s sake), and he probably sized up the script, counted the number of zeroes after the initial digit, realized he’d be performing most of the movie under layers of CGI anyway, and went shopping for a new boat. What’s less easy to understand is why anyone bothered to make Ghost Rider in the first place. The character was always pretty absurd, even by the bong-rattled standards of the 1970s Marvel Bullpen that produced him: a motorcycle stunt rider who gets possessed by the Devil and fights crime for some reason. He was never really that popular, even by the standards of juveniles who find that description totally bad-ass, and was mostly remembered until this movie came out as the only character based on a tattoo to star in his own title. Still, in the right hands, a decent movie could have been made of Ghost Rider, but the right hands are not those of the disgraceful Mark Steven Johnson. The biggest mystery of all is why anyone in Hollywood would give this guy a job doing anything after he made the horrible Daredevil and wrote the even more horrible Elektra, and yet, here he is again, screwing up another comic book character. The sole consolation of Ghost Rider is that nobody appears to have seen it, so maybe my bad memories of it are just a nightmare.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)

This big-budget belly flop marked a true historic moment in the twinned histories of both movies and comics; never before had a major studio release been widely criticized for having dumbed-down a comic book. The illustrator Kevin O'Neill gave a deliciously perverse period look to Alan Moore's parodic adventure serial about a Victorian era Super Friends team comprised of Alan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man, and Dracula's old flame, Mina Harker. The director, Stephen Norrington, began work on the project by casting Sean Connery as Quartermain, apparently a sadistic act designed to get fans' hopes up by giving a false impression that he knew what he was doing. Elsewhere, Norrington and his screenwriter, James Dale Robinson (a comics scribe best known for his work on DC's Starman and the miniseries The Golden Age), coarsened and blunted the comic's sly edge, altering its characters for the worse (such as in the wrong call of making Mina Harker explicitly vampiric, even though the starchy proto-feminist of the comic was much more intimidating than any mere bloodsucker) and added new personnel, including a twentyish Tom Sawyer, presumably intended as a sop to the American market, and Dorian Gray, apparently included so that Norrington could hire, and then not fire, Stuart Townsend, just to show that he was stupider than Peter Jackson. The movie provided news for gossip columnists throughout its production, thanks to the battles between Connery and the director. When it was finally over, Connery announced that the experience had inspired him to retire from acting, and it didn't do anybody else's career any favors either.

THE NINE LIVES OF FRITZ THE CAT (1974)

Ralph Bakshi's 1972 Fritz the Cat, an adults-only feature animation based on a Robert Crumb character, helped attract Crumb's work a lot of attention, and the cartoonist has been bitching about it ever since; he can be seen early in the documentary Crumb complaining about how Bakshi browbeat him into giving him the rights and then debased his work. Bakshi's film wasn't very good, but the sequel, which he had nothing to do with, makes Bakshi's work look like the second coming of Winsor McKay. Most of the film, which includes Fritz's encounters with Hitler and various stereotypical mid-'70s "street" characters, settles for being ugly-looking and obnoxious, but it goes for broke in the last section, a mess of racist and anti-Semitic cariactures in which President Henry Kissinger sends Fritz on a mission to New Jersey, which has fallen under black rule and changed its name to "New Africa." If the actual Crumb's work was twice as offensive as his most hard-assed detractors claim that it is, and not funny or aesthetically pleasing at all, it would still be better than this.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Megan Fox Goes Deep

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Transformers star Megan Fox is taking additional steps to shore up her fan base with comic book nerds. Not only is she in negotiations to co-star with Josh Brolin in Jonah Hex, but according to The Hollywood Reporter she is also set to star in the comic book adaptation Fathom. The story “follows a young woman named Aspen who learns she is a member of a race of aquatic humanoids who possess the ability to control water.” Aquaman, eat your heart out.

Kevin Smith has two stars and a new title for his project formerly known as A Couple of Dicks. The newly titled A Couple of Cops will star Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Smith’s major studio debut for Warner Bros., “centered on a pair of cops who track down a stolen baseball card, rescue a Mexican beauty and must deal with gangsters and laundered drug money,” per Variety.

Christopher Nolan’s latest has a title – Inception – and a star – Leonardo DiCaprio. “Script has been kept under wraps but the studio calls it a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.” I’ll show you the architecture of the mind!

Related:
Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds
When Good Directors Go Bad?: Insomnia (Christopher Nolan)

Morning Deal Report: The Cruise/Cronenberg Circle

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel The Matarese Circle is attracting some big names. Denzel Washington is already on board, and now Tom “Eyepatch” Cruise is in talks to join him. “Cruise will go mano a mano with Washington as two bitter enemy spies who, after spending two decades trying to kill each other, grudgingly team up against the Matarese, a powerful group at the root of a conspiracy,” Variety reports.

Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan has set up his latest bat-free project at Warner Bros. His original script Inception is described as a sci-fi action film, but as The Hollywood Reporter notes, “one would suppose a treatment based on some poems he wrote in his fifth-grade journal would have gotten the green light.”

John Malkovich has signed on to play the bad guy in Jonah Hex. “Malkovich will play Turnbull, a wealthy Southern plantation owner whose son is killed by Union soldiers during the Civil War. He blames Hex, a former confederate soldier-turned-hardened bounty hunter and gunslinger,” per Variety.

Related:
Tom Cruise, at Midlife, with a Freaking Eyepatch
Horton Hears a Hex

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

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

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

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

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

MEMENTO (2000)

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

TARNATION (2003)

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

OLD JOY (2006)

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

TROUBLE THE WATER (2008)

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

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

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

In Other Blogs: Oscar Grumbling

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

What could be more predictable than the announcement of the Oscar nominees yesterday? Bloggers bitching about said nominations, of course! At Scanners, Jim Emerson has no love for frontrunner Slumdog Millionaire. “Not since Crash -- or possibly Mississippi Burning -- has a movie packaged brutality in slicker, shinier, tighter shrink-wrap. It's asphyxiating. You will never have to worry about what you are supposed to feel and when you are supposed to feel it because the movie will always feed you the answers, then smack you when it's your cue to emote. You can "surrender" completely to the experience (it demands nothing less), and you needn't worry that you will be given an idle moment in which you will be left to feel, or breathe, on your own.”

Dana Stevens and Troy Patterson debate the nominations at Slate. “Scanning the list of nominees, I find myself in the odd position of feeling indignant on behalf of a movie I didn't like much, Revolutionary Road,” Stevens writes. “I don't think I would mind this handsomely mounted yawner getting what amounts to a jumbo-sized dis—Leo not up for best actor, Mendes not up for best director, Justin Haythe not up for best adapted screenplay, the movie itself ignored for best picture—if it weren't for the alarming number of accolades beings heaped on Revolutionary Road's evil twin, The Reader. Everyone knew Kate would get a best-actress nod, and as a five-time loser, she still seems likely to win the category. But it somehow besmirches her honor to be recognized for the execrable Reader (aka Boohoo, I Bonked an Illiterate Nazi).”

The Defamer offers up 5 Plots and Subplots to Watch in This Years’ Oscar Race, including: How much will Harvey Weinstein spend to buy Kate Winslet an Oscar? “The Reader's extraordinary showing this morning owes everything to Harvey's secret formula of marketing, publicity and assiduous word-of-mouth since last fall. But the cash-poor Weinstein Company doesn't stand a chance against Slumdog Millionaire in Picture, Director or Adapted Screenplay, so it comes down to Actress. It's one of the weakest categories of the year, with Winslet facing her stiffest competition probably from Anne Hathaway. Or Harvey can take the nominations — and the advertisement/DVD box copy that accompanies them —- and run. Ha. Right.”

Of course, some are upset about the perceived snub of The Dark Knight, but as Dateline: Hollywood reports, that won’t happen again. “In an move that the director said had nothing to do with this morning's Oscar nominations, Christopher Nolan has announced plans for a Dark Knight sequel that will take place during Nazi era Germany and reveal that Batman is gay and aging backwards.”

Finally, the folks at Funny or Die have noticed something about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that you, too, may have noticed:

The Curious Case of Forrest Gump - watch more funny videos

Screengrab at Sundance: Slamdance

bilge — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Screengrab editor emeritus Bilge Ebiri reports from the frontlines of Park City.

I’ve always felt guilty about not doing enough coverage of Slamdance, the underdog cousin to Sundance that runs in Park City around the same time. It often shows excellent films – especially in the shorts department – and is staffed by cheerful, enthusiastic people who love to watch and make movies. I didn’t get around to it this year either – I did drop by their office and pick up some screeners – and judging by the fact that most writers I knew were complaining about how little time they had, I imagine most of them didn’t either. Which is a shame. And I’m not sure it’s going to get any better. Which is why I’ve come to a realization: Slamdance should consider moving its dates, its location, or both.

Hear me out, hear me out: Slamdance has become a world class festival. For cryin’ out loud, it’s where Christopher Nolan and Marc Forster got their starts, among many others. Larry Clark and Steven Soderbergh have shown films here. Part of being a world class festival, though, is to establish your own identity and to carve out your own space. Slamdance has done this, to some extent, by taking over the top of Main Street in Park City and sending its scrappy, attention-hungry filmmakers out onto the street with their postcards, their goofy costumes, and their persistence, in an effort to grab the attentions of Sundance attendees. This has worked up until now. But how long can they go on feeding off Sundance’s crumbs? Maybe the solution is to just shift the dates slightly, so that there are a few non-Sundance days when press and other assorted folks can take a look at Slamdance films?

This will probably never happen – being here during Sundance is Slamdance’s raison d’etre. And for all I know maybe they get enough while they’re here – this year they got coverage in the LA Times, Indiewire, and some other venues. I do know that many of their screenings sell out. And I’m sure their sponsors would have something to say about the notion of moving the festival away from Sundance’s bracket. But I feel like being thought of simply as the Bizarro to Sundance’s Superman isn’t doing Slamdance’s filmmakers any favors. True, they get to be in town while all these agents and producers and reps and critics are also in town, and maybe they even get lucky and meet some of these people. But it’s hard enough for a Sundance film to get noticed during Sundance. I imagine it ain’t easy for a Slamdance film to get noticed during Sundance. Anyway, it’s just a thought. One that will go unheeded, but whatever, I’ve had my say.

Video of the Day: "Dark Knight", Schmark Knight

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:45:00 GMT

While everyone sits around whingeing about whether or not the late Heath Ledger is going to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the Joker in Christopher Nolan's made-more-cheddar-than-Kraft The Dark Knight, we're all about honoring the past here at the Screengrab. And what better way to honor the past than to show the audition test that got Adam West and a classy young fella named Burton Gervis their gigs as Batman and Robin?

Just imagine if the runners-up, Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, would have gotten the job! Uh...never mind.

Screengrab Predicts the Oscars: Nominations (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:45:00 GMT

BEST DIRECTOR

Scott Von Doviak Predicts:

NOMINEES
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
Gus Van Sant (Milk)

David Fincher got respectable with Benjamin Button. Gus Van Sant did the same with Milk. Ron Howard is always an Academy favorite, so he should be there for Frost/Nixon. Danny Boyle put on a show in Slumdog Millionaire. The final slot is up for grabs, but I think Christopher Nolan has the best shot for The Dark Knight.

WINNER
Danny Boyle

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts:

NOMINEES
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Charlie Kaufmann (Synecdoche, NY)
Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
Gus Van Sant (Milk)

Charlie Kaufman will be nominated for Synecdoche, NY because it is a director's movie. However that will feel too forced of a winner, so Gus Van Sant will win for Milk. That is, unless the Academy goes with escapism in these trying times and Christopher Nolan wins for The Dark Knight. If the latter transpires, it will be one of those head-scratching moments when the reel of past winners rolls at future Awards shows. There is no way Danny Boyle will come in from left field and win for Slumdog Millionaire, but the Academy will want to show that they appreciate a good movie, so will nominate him anyway. Ron Howard will be thrown a nomination for engaging the Nixon presidency, a national trauma that we like to think seems timely.

WINNER
Gus Van Sant

Paul Clark Predicts:

NOMINEES
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
Andrew Stanton (WALL*E)
Gus Van Sant (Milk)

It’s rare for a Best Director shortlist to double the Best Picture nominees five-for-five, and of the Best Picture nominations I’m predicting, Frost/Nixon feels the least like a “director’s movie.” But who takes Ron Howard’s place? If The Wrestler catches on with the voters beyond a couple of acting nominations, Darren Aronofsky might place here -- likewise The Reader’s Stephen Daldry and Happy-Go-Lucky’s Mike Leigh, both two-time directing nominees. As always, one shouldn’t count out Clint Eastwood. But I’m going out on a limb here and predicting WALL*E director Andrew Stanton, as a nomination here would give Academy members a chance to recognize the film outside of its inevitable Best Animated Feature win, thereby making him the first director ever nominated for an animated film. As for the winner, bet on Fincher to win even if the film doesn’t, as the epic scope and classically-inflected style of Button should prove to be right up the voters’ collective alley.

WINNER
David Fincher

Andrew Osborne Predicts:

NOMINEES
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
Gus Van Sant (Milk)

We made our Director predictions before the announcement of the DGA awards, so we’re all flying a little blind in this category. Ron Howard was Opie and Frost/Nixon was good, so he seems like an even-money bet. Christopher Nolan will surely ride The Dark Knight wave, and folks seem enamored of the creepy old man baby (and, I suppose, the swoony, melancholy romance) of Benjamin Button, so I reckon the powers-that-be might finally be ready to forgive David Fincher for Alien³. Whether or not his film receives a Best Picture nod, Danny Boyle will probably get nominated...because if directing means wrangling a zillion elements (including half the population of Mumbai) into a coherent, entertaining auteurial vision, then Boyle certainly directed the shit outta Slumdog Millionaire. And finally, I guess I have to go with Gus Van Sant for Milk, even though it means I just basically wound up parroting all the predictions in Entertainment Weekly. As for the actual winner...hmm. Though I think Dark Knight’s gonna win Best Picture, it’s still basically just an action film (no, really...it’s just an action film, people). Howard, Fincher and Boyle did fine work, but Van Sant has passion on his side and managed to get a labor of love to the finish line (after many failed attempts by previous players) so: him.

WINNER
Gus Van Sant

Leonard Pierce Predicts:

NOMINATIONS

Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married)
Clint Eastwood (Changeling)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road)
John Patrick Shanley (Doubt)

Clint’s gonna get nominated for something, and please God don’t let it be for the damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn disaster Gran Torino. Demme gets the ‘year of the comeback’ nomination for Rachel Getting Married, and Shanley will pick up a nom since the Academy has a weakness for directors who aren’t really directors. It’ll come down to a slugfest between Mendes and Howard, who’s finally made a movie worth nominating, and I think, in a year that won’t see any big sweep winners, that Revolutionary Road will get Mr. Kate Winslet the big prize. BIGGEST SCREWJOB: Hollywood isn’t quite ready to welcome back Gus Van Sant, and Benjamin Button is the least David Fincherish movie David Fincher has ever directed, so they’ll get passed over.

WINNER
Sam Mendes

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NOMINEES
DANNY BOYLE, DAVID FINCHER, RON HOWARD, CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, GUS VAN SANT

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WINNER
GUS VAN SANT

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

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

How Philip Seymour Hoffman Would Have Played The Penguin

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

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

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

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The Best of 2008: Leonard Pierce's Picks for the Best Movies of the Year, Part One

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

2008 is already getting a rap as a bad year for filmmaking, which is entirely unfair -- it's merely a good year that has to contend with coming right after 2007, one of the greatest years in recent cinematic history. It's also the first year where I spent the entire year as a critic living in a city that seems allergic to art films; when it came time to compile my top tens, which no doubt reflect my current cultural circumstances, I found I had seen fewer of the most highly praised films of the year than in any recent memory. Putting this list together involved a lot of work on my part -- not the normal intellectual work of weighing the artistic merits of each movie and finding something to say about them, but the physical work of actually seeing the damn things, when a good half of them didn't play in my city. This is especially true of the 2008 end-of-year releases. But throught a combination of tactics, including but not limited to Netflix, filesharing, begging publicists for screeners, shuttling back and forth to Austin, and, in the case of my #1 pick, engaging in a quest that would, itself, make a pretty good movie, I managed to put together a list of my ten favorite films of the year. I don't know how you loyal readers will take it -- I know that I'm at odds with a few of my Screengrab colleagues on at least a couple of these -- but here I stand, in a year that ain't as bad as it seemed.

10. MILK (Gus Van Sant, dir.)

Three decades too late, but this is the year of Harvey Milk: the new album by an Athens-based band that bears the assassinated San Francisco supervisor’s name is one of the best of the year, as is Gus Van Sant’s biopic of the country’s first openly gay elected official. Noted by Van Sant as the first movie of his return to mainstream filmmaking, Milk has been criticized for taking a straightforward approach rather than showcasing the director’s more experimental side, but, like Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, it largely succeeds because it lets the flashy stylistic touches take a back seat to what is, after all, one of the most compelling political stories of the American century. Sean Penn is rightly getting props for his terrific performance as Harvey Milk; it’s a career-redeeming showing after nearly a decade of missteps. But no one should ignore the excellent supporting performance, especially those of James Franco as Milk’s partner Scott Smith and Josh Brolin as the tortured killer Dan White. Elegant, appealing, timely and persuasive without being preachy, Milk is one of the best biopics of recent vintage.

9. BALLAST (Lance Hammer, dir.)

Lance Hammer’s debut feature film Ballast is being widely proffered as proof that reports of independent film’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The indie scene was on the rocks this year, to be sure, but Ballast is a mighty convincing argument for its continued vitality. It deals quietly and hypnotically with the emotional paralysis into which a Mississippi family is thrown after one brother commits suicide, and its characters – played almost entirely by an amateur cast using improvised dialogue – are so real as to be astonishing. The performances by a batch of promising unknowns are halting, wandering, and unspectacular, because people rarely react to such an event in a spectacular way. Likewise, criticism of the film’s slow pace seem off the mark to me: the movie’s slow movement and stately grace (visually abetted by some incredible cinematography by Lol Crawley) recall Ozu, who was rarely subject to such carping. Ballast is a thing of dark, slow beauty.

8. THE DARK KNIGHT (Christopher Nolan, dir.)

The opinion of a million IMDB fanboys notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn’t one of the greatest films ever made. Now that it’s available on DVD, its flaws are easy to catch on repeat viewings: too much of David S. Goyer’s heavy scriptwriting hand, a confused and uncentered role for Batman himself, and an ending that continues to make precious little sense. But, by the same token, its strengths are also mightily in evidence, ready for anyone to savor who thinks a big-screen action picture can’t also be a good movie: a number of near-perfect emotional moments, a riveting conjuration of a city caught in the grips of terror, and, of course, Heath Ledger’s absolutely electrifying performance as the Joker, one of the greatest screen villains in history. And, in the same way he used a pulp noir thriller as the framework for one of the most deeply philosophical mainstream movies ever in Memento, Nolan manages to take a superhero punch-‘em-up and turn it into one of the most profoundly political movies of the year.

7. IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T'AIME [I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG] (Phillipe Claudel, dir.)

This French drama is, with Synechdoche, New York, one of two amazing films made this year by first-time directors who are better known for their writing. Phillipe Claudel, a well-respected screenwriter and novelist, has made a movie as small and controlled as Charlie Kaufman’s is ambitious and sprawling: it’s remarkably tight for a first effort, with none of the excess that often betrays a first effort. With not a single frame wasted, he brings us the story of Juliette Fontaine, a woman whose sister takes her into a distrusting – not to say dysfunctional – family after she has spent fifteen years in prison; Kristin Scott Thomas (who seems an entirely different actress, and a far superior one, in French than she is in English) plays her with an emotional and physical reticence that borders on exhaustion, and she’s perfectly complemented by Elsa Zylberstein as her loving, determined sister. It’s the best family drama in years, understated and nearly perfect at conveying its emotional complexities.

6. MAN ON WIRE (James Marsh, dir.)

The most compelling documentary of the year is based on an event so trivial it would be almost entirely forgotten if not for the existence of the movie: Phillipe Petit’s jaw-dropping, pointless, spectacular, and foolhardy tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center during its construction in 1974. Filmed by the director of Wisconsin Death Trip and using similar techniques (including some arbitrary, though skillful reenactments), Man On Wire brings us a movie about the WTC that has nothing to do with the terror attacks that brought it down – and yet which cannot escape comparison, with its images of bits of the towers in chaos (though from construction, not destruction), its central plot of a small group of schemers engaging in intricate planning to conquer them (though their motivation is art, not violence), and its unforgettable image of Petit suspended between the buildings, so eerily reminiscent of the shots of those who fell on September 11th. Petit did not fall; we know he did not, because we see and hear him from the movie’s first shots. The fact that it’s so fascinating to watch though we know he didn’t fall is a testament to its power as a film.

Click for Part Two

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

WHIT STILLMAN (& CHRIS EIGEMAN)

Like caviar or triple-malt scotch, the films of Whit Stillman are rarified, WASPy treats best savored while the rest of the world noshes on Big Macs and beer. Around the time Richard Linklater was eavesdropping on his beloved Austin eccentrics in Slacker and Kevin Smith was chronicling the lives of hyper-articulate, dirty-minded New Jersey wage slaves in Clerks, Stillman’s indie debut, Metropolitan, focused on yet another chatty, self-contained subculture: the privileged debutantes and awkward urban haute bourgeoisie of the Upper East Side twentysomething social circuit. Dry, sardonic Chris Eigeman and nervous, schleppy Taylor Nichols were Metropolitan’s standouts, and Stillman wisely paired the sweet-and-sour comic duo as brothers in his follow-up, Barcelona, a witty, extremely low-concept picaresque about boorish Americans abroad in 1980s Spain. Eigeman also starred in The Last Days of Disco, the final installment of the director’s overeducated white people trilogy (and also his last film to date). For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, given its thematic and tonal similarity to its predecessors, Disco (which also features Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard) was considered a disappointment by most fans and critics (if not by Stillman himself, who enjoyed the tale of bed and club-hopping yuppies enough to retell the story again a few years later as a fake roman-a-clef in the voice of one of the film’s characters). Sadly, Stillman’s vision was too wordy, insular and quirky even for art house audiences, making it impossible in recent years for him to finance subsequent projects, the worst result of which (to my way of thinking) is the resultant lack of good roles for the hilarious (and criminally underused) Eigeman. Yet the Internet Movie Database says that Stillman is currently adapting Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and though no cast is listed yet, with luck maybe it’s a good sign that Eigeman (recently Spirit Award-nominated for his directorial debut, Turn the River) will someday appear in front of the camera again and not just behind it.

BROOKE ADAMS

In the late '70s and early '80s, Adams' dark-haired beauty, sense of fun, and tantalizing hint of neurosis (in such films as Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Tell Me a Riddle, The Dead Zone, and Almost You) made her the thinking horndog's indie movie star of choice, but then she drifted out of sight. She only turned up in movies a couple of times during the '90s, most notably in Alison Anders's 1992 Gas Food Lodging. That same year, she married Tony Shalhoub, with whom she had a daughter the next year. In 2002, she had her only big movie role of recent years in Made-Up, a charming but barely seen comedy that Shalhoub co-starred in and directed, from a script by her sister, Lynne Adams. About the only other way to have gazed on her in recent years would be to monitor Shalhoub's TV series; she's made guest appearances on both Wings and Monk. So long as they're happy, I'm happy. I miss her, though.

MARE WINNINGHAM

In 1985, Winningham co-starred in the prototypical Brat Pack movie St. Elmo's Fire, when she was 26. Dramatically, she was at a disadvantage for being cast as the least emotional, mildest mannered of the seven lead characters, though she also had an edge in that she was the only one of the movie's stars, besides Ally Sheedy, who could act a lick. (At the time, anyway: Rob Lowe had his moments fifteen years later on The West Wing.) Winningham has the kind of virtues that can easily be cast as negatives, but she's such a capable, talented actress that her honesty and decency can seem radiant and illuminating rather than starchy and prim; to fully appreciate her, check out the 1995 Georgia, where her superb performance as a hard-working, mess-cleaning musician can be viewed aside Jennifer Jason Leigh's gruesomely self-immolating, exhibitionistic display as her self-immolating sister. The worst thing that could ever be said of Winningham is that her honorable acting style has sometimes failed to make the dull, underwritten roles she's been stuck with seem livelier than they are, but anyone who saw her as the unconventional love of Anthony Edwards' life in Miracle Mile (1989) or the blubbering girlfriend who's quick to dump the jobless Timothy Hutton in Made in Heaven (1987) knows that her gifts include a wild streak. As she enters her middle years -- she turns fifty next year -- it sure would be something to get to see the nice girl be given the chance to cut the hell loose.

PAMELA REED

It's easy to imagine aspiring directors in Hollywood being sent forth into the valley armed with one basic, flawless piece of no-brainer advice: if you have a scene that you want the audience to stay awake for, stick Pamela Reed onscreen. Since 1980, her first year in movies, inviting David Carradine and Sonny Landham to have a knife fight for her honor (Carradine: "What does the winner get?" Reed: "Nothin' you ain't both already had.") in The Long Riders and presenting Paul La Mat with a marriage proposal that should have come with a free toaster in Melvin and Howard, she's been practically storming off the screen and slapping the cell phones out of people's hands. Why has this woman never been offered the chance to carry a movie? Is it thought that a woman with her energy and internal strength would alienate audiences if they had to put up with her for more than a few scenes at a time? Sure, that makes sense: it's not as if Bette Davis had a career. But I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be grateful for what we get of her, especially given that she's spent most of the past decade hanging around TV sets. This did give her the chance to revive one of her greatest roles, the fully caffeinated political campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh of Robert Alman's Tanner '88 and its 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. On the other hand, that Jericho thing didn't do anybody any good. She belongs on the big screen, where she can take on dragons big enough to make it seem like a fair fight (as does her co-star from Tanner and The Right Stuff, Veronica Cartwright, and Amy Madigan, another actress who doesn't need to chug kerosene before she arrives on the set to breathe fire).

PIPER PERABO

Can it really be called a comeback if a star never quite hit it big in the first place? Consider the sad case of Piper Perabo. In 2000, she was being called Hollywood's It Girl, with two high-profile projects on the horizon. Unfortunately for her, those projects were The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Coyote Ugly. The former was a notorious stinker in which Perabo's performance got lost amid the second-rate animation and hammy turns from Robert DeNiro and Rene Russo. The latter was a modest success, but one that had less to do with its nominal lead than audiences flocking to see scantily-clad dancing female bartenders. Having gained no momentum whatsoever from her alleged star-making vehicles, Perabo's career quickly hit the skids, with the actress appearing in a string of lame-brained thrillers and forgettable comedies, with the occasional supporting role in the Steve Martin-headed Cheaper By the Dozen franchise. Eight years after being declared the Next Big Thing, Perabo was last seen playing second banana to a cast of talking Chihuahuas. Frankly, that's a shame, because despite the disappointing trajectory of her career, Perabo remains a vibrant, fetching actress with an infectious smile and a surprisingly soulful side. Just look at her brief appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige -- as Hugh Jackman's ill-fated lover, Perabo brings more genuine spark and feeling to her role than her more tabloid-friendly costar Scarlett Johansson could hope to muster. Even better is 2001's Lost and Delirious, a mostly forgotten Canadian film about teenage sexuality in an ivy-covered boarding school. Perabo steals the show as Paulie, a rebellious young woman nursing a hopeless love for her reluctant classmate. It's a performance that's so white-hot with intensity and charged with eroticism that she eventually becomes more than the film can really take. So why exactly was she last seen in a movie that called for her to bark into a telephone? Your guess is as good as ours.

Click Here For Part One, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

I Don't Mind a Parasite, I Object to a Cut-Rate One

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:15:00 GMT

Early shoppers who lined up quick at their local video vendors this morning got a one-time special treat with their DVD copies of The Dark Knight. No, not the free digital download code that allows you to get a second copy of the billion-dollar actioner (unless, of course, you own a Mac, or want to be able to play it on your iPod, or something crazy like that).

No, I'm talking about the hilariously misguided -- though is there any other kind -- anti-piracy 'public service' advertisement that precedes the movie. Anyone who ponied up for a copy of the latest Christoper Nolan Batman flick -- and are thus by definition not engaging in piracy -- got to watch a bunch of footage from Casablanca in which Rick Blaine estimates those who would violate studio policy as being morally somewhere south of Major Strasser.

There are a lot of genuine arguments to be made in favor of the anti-piracy stance. But exhuming the corpses of people involved in the creation of a classic Hollywood film and pressing them (without consent, naturally) into the sevice of the corporate digital rights management issue -- which is unquestionably a political one more than it is a moral one -- is a lot sleazier than buying a DVD and making a copy for a friend. You stay classy, Warner Brothers.

Apple Falls Far From Tree

Helming the Heroes

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:15:00 GMT

The recent proliferation of superhero movies have taught us that, of all things, auteur theory ain't quite dead yet. Hand your project over to a director of unique vision, a man with deep obsessions and specific stylistic and thematic ideas, and you get The Dark Knight. Hand your project over to a director with big ideas but not enough talent to carry them off, and you get Daredevil. Hand your project over to a director with no ideas and no talent, and you get Elektra. As goes art, so goes action: even in the cinema of capes and cowls, it's all about the director.

So, given that, what can we expect from yesterday's announcements about who will be helming two hotly anticipated comic book projects? The new Captain America flick, the last big Marvel solo adventure until we're treated to the long-awaited Avengers movie, will be directed by Joe Johnston; the new Conan the Barbarian (which isn't based on a comic, but features a character whose prominence in modern-day geek consciousness is more attributable to Roy Thomas' 1970s Marvel comics series than it is to Robert E. Howard's original stories) has fallen into the hands of Brett Ratner.

Neither of these guys are Christopher Nolan-level filmmakers, or even Bryan Singer-level filmmakers. How successful these films will be depends on which director shows up with his A-game; if we get the Joe Johnston who directed the charming, underrated superhero movie The Rocketeer, then Captain America could be a patriotic, nostalgic romp, but if we get the Joe Johnston who directed Jumanji, we could be in for a long wait until The Avengers comes out. Ratner has nothing as good as The Rocketeer on his resume, and he's also single-handedly responsible for trashing the X-Men franchise. Add to that the fact that, instead of legit heavyweights like John Milius and Oliver Stone (who did the original 1982 film version of Conan) providing him with a script, he's got the guys who did A Sound of Thunder, and we don't think anyone will be forgetting Schwarzenegger's version anytime soon.

Benecio del Toro is The Wolfman

One Billion Bats

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

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

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

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

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

Fox Takes Marvel's Dare

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

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

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

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

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Dark Knight: The All-Talking-Head Edition

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

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

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

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

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Why So Serious? The Dark Knight in the Political World

Michael Caine, Batspoiler

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

So you're in a high-stress profession. You work all day and all night to try to make the world a better place, but to protect some very important people, you have to keep certain things about your job secret. But the strain of such a massive secret, a thing that some people would kill to know, can't be borne forever by just one man. So you turn to the one person you think you can trust, the one man you believe will keep your secret: your faithful butler. And then he goes and blabs it to the whole world.

Ever since Christopher Nolan's latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, made its first trillion dollars, speculation has been rampant about who's going to play the villain role in the next installment. Heath Ledger's untimely death makes it an unlikely, albeit intriguing, possibility that he'll return as the Joker; the two hottest rumors are that Angelina Jolie will be the draw, slipping into a Catwoman costume, and that Johnny Depp and Phillip Seymour Hoffman will tag team as the Riddler and the Penguin. Both have generally dismissed as fan-driven wishful thinking until yesterday, when Michael Caine -- currenty paying his club fees as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred -- took a moment at the Toronto International Film Festival to cite an unnamed Warner Brothers exec and insist that the latter rumor is true.

Of course, just to keep us baying, Hoffman had to come out and insist he's never heard any such thing. But who are you gonna trust, the Penguin, or Batman's loyal batman? The rat!

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When Good Directors Go Bad?: Insomnia (2002, Christopher Nolan)

Paul Clark — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

One of the biggest dangers faced by an up-and-coming filmmaker is the burden of high expectations. If one is talented (and lucky) enough to make a movie that strikes a chord with critics and/or audiences, it can be tricky deciding what direction your career should take, now that people are anticipating your next move. This was the problem that Christopher Nolan faced after the release of his 2000 film, Memento, which not only bowled over the critics but also became the indie sleeper of 2001, accumulating deafening word-of-mouth during its protracted run in America’s arthouses before reaching an even wider audience on DVD. Memento made a dent in a public consciousness, people were curious about what was next for the newly anointed wunderkind who directed it.

Naturally, there was some head-scratching when it was announced that Nolan’s follow-up would be a remake of the 1997 Norwegian crime drama Insomnia. It was only natural to assume that the director of a buzz magnet like Memento would want to go Hollywood, but many people wondered what could have motivated him to helm a star-studded remake of an acclaimed foreign film, a career move that’s traditionally assumed on roughly the level of directing a Martin Lawrence vehicle. Was Nolan selling out, or did he have a legitimately interesting twist on the original material?

When I first saw Nolan’s Insomnia in 2002, I thought the former. Much of this had to do with the memories of Erik Skjoldbjærg’s original being fresh in my mind. Consequently, I had a hard time resisting the urge to compare the two films, and Nolan’s take was invariably found wanting. I mostly resented his need to soften the story, making its protagonist less of a prick and more of a showboat, a change that reflected the switch from Stellan Skarsgård to Al Pacino in the lead role. Likewise, there were a number of other narrative switcheroos that just didn’t sit well with me. I was hardly alone in this respect- Insomnia received mostly lukewarm reviews and opened to middling box office. Even the positive notices for the film seemed mostly respectful rather than enthusiastic, as if the critics were let down by the film’s inability to live up to the Memento’s high standard.

Six years later, in the wake of the resounding success of Nolan’s The Dark Knight, I felt compelled to re-visit Insomnia. I suppose I wanted to see whether my initial perceptions of it were skewed by my personal biases (pro-Memento, pro-Skjoldbjærg, anti-remake). Is it as subpar as I’d remembered? In a word, no. Insomnia isn’t a great film, but it’s a perfectly serviceable police procedural with some interesting elements, a movie that somewhat better than its middling rep would indicate.

This isn’t to say that it doesn’t have problems. The most glaring is Robin Williams’ performance as the killer who bedevils Al Pacino’s Det. Dormer (a too-obvious choice of names, by the way). Granted, it’s a tricky role to play- a man who has been sent around the bend by the killing he’s committed and now must manipulate the law officer who’s pursuing him in order to stay alive. Yet Williams never manages to make the character convincing. Instead, he gives a very actorly performance, with plenty of tortured facial acting plus a calm voice designed to tell us how unnaturally levelheaded the character is, but he never makes him work as a living, breathing person instead of an actor playing a role.

However, getting some distance from the original version of Insomnia has allowed me to better appreciate Al Pacino’s performance in the remake. Whereas Skarsgård performance in the original movie was a study in submerged conflict, Pacino’s has a much more physical take on the character’s troubles. In Nolan’s film, Dormer is facing problems from all sides- the case he’s working on, the Internal Affairs investigation that could very well ruin his career, his inability to sleep, and his guilt for accidentally killing his partner. By the time Williams comes calling to blackmail him with knowledge of the partner’s murder, Pacino is already in over his head, and the new complication just makes it even worse for him. It’s a surprisingly complex turn, and probably the last big-screen Pacino performance I’ve really enjoyed.

In addition, Nolan does a pretty good job at exploiting the stylistic possibilities of the story, particularly the never-setting sun of the film’s Alaskan setting. Most obviously, there’s the oppressiveness of the sunlight streaming into Dormer’s room as he tries (and fails) to sleep, but I also liked the way Nolan’s direction reflected Dormer’s shifting psychological state as the film progressed. The longer the character goes without sleep, the less he is in control of his senses, and Nolan makes the lights brighter and the sounds more invasive. There are also a number of effective moments in which Dormer visits the town in the middle of the night, the streets completely empty except for him. And a foot chase across dozens logs that are rapidly floating downstream is pretty damned exciting.

Don’t get me wrong- Insomnia is still a “minor” film in Nolan’s career. But watching it for the second time, it feels like a transitional effort for its director. It may have lacked the freshness and novelty of Memento, but I’d say that was good for Nolan in the long run, allowing him to make a movie that wasn’t simply founded upon a clever twist. In addition, it demonstrated to Hollywood that his sensibility- cool, clinical, philosophical- was compatible with a big-budget film. In addition, the film’s questioning of the morality of the crime drama anticipates Nolan’s work in The Dark Knight. Insomnia might not be of the caliber of Nolan’s other films, but it’s still a fairly solid film from a major filmmaker, and considering how good his subsequent work has been (especially The Prestige, my favorite film of 2006), that’s good enough for me.

The Rep Report: September 5--10

Phil Nugent — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:30:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Anthology Film Archives commences its salute to Jerry Schatzberg tonight with screenings of the director's firat features, the 1970 alienation-fest Puzzle of a Downfall Child (starring Faye Dunway) and the 1971 The Panic in Needle Park, costarring Al Pacino, in his first starring role, and Kitty Winn as a young couple of heroin addicts. Schatzberg, who seems to be more or less retired, had an erratic career, and to his other problems, he'll probably have at least one chance during his personal appearance at this retrospective to patiently explain that, no, he isn't Joel Schumacher. But as a filmmaker he had a broad curiosity about different milieus and kinds of characters, and his pictures have generally had texture and weight. Needle Park retains interest as a deep quaff of '70s New York at its most confoundingly ungovernable, and Schatzberg can boast of having directed Pacino in both his last performance before The Godfather made him a star and the first picture he made afterwards, the 1973 road movie Scarecrow co-starring Gene Hackman. When Schatzberg made the New York-set Street Smart fifteen years after Needle Park, he had to shoot it in Toronto, but once again he helped launch the movie career of a major star, this time someone who'd been working for decades and would turn fifty the year the picture was released: just a couple of years earlier, Morgan Freeman had been reduced to holding down a job on Another World, but his terrifying performance as a pimp who emerges like a monster from the id to turn pampered reporter Christopher Reeve's life into a pretzel earned him his first Academy Award nomination and a long-belated measure of the industry stature he'd long deserved. Also showing: Honeysuckle Rose, a 1980 country music remake of Intermezzo starring Willie Nelson and Dyan Cannon, which introduced Willie's theme song "On the Road Again," and "Reunion," a sadly overlooked 1989 film starring Jason Robards, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

Raindance, the British company responsible for the Raindance Film Festival (which opens October 7, by the way), is bringing its educational program to the New York Film Academy. Aspiring filmmakers looking to drop a few bucks towards their futures might want to check out Elliot Grove's "99 MInute Film School" on Tuesday, September 9 and the "Lo to No Budget Filmmaking" seminar on the weekend of September 13 and 14, which bears a recommendation blurb from director Christopher Nolan, whose most recent film, The Dark Knight, has been well-received. This marks the first time the Raindance people's first venture into America, and it might be nice if it wasn't their last, so for God's sake, behave yourselves.

LOS ANGELES: Every Thursday in September, the Silent Movie Theater hosts "Word Is Born: Hip Hop at the Movies, 1979-1984". Included are Hollywood exploitation jobs such as Breakin' and Beat Street, the solid period documentary Style Wars, and on September 25, Beat This! Hip Hop Rarities, winner of this month's Rep Report Award for Promotional Copy That We Have No Intention of Trying to Re-Word: " We've dug even deeper for our closeout night, and we're bringing you some of the rarest cuts in a fantastic mix of rarities from the old-school hip-hop era. Watch them one after the other, obscure odds and ends from the Golden Age, ending with Beat This! A Hip-Hop History! Yup! It’s the history of hip-hop! And it was made in 1984! And it’s all in rhyme! And it’s vocoderized by Afrika Bambaataa! And it’s sci-fi! And it stars BS-ing punk-impresario-turned-double-dutch-promoter Malcolm McLaren in all his patronizing glory! And it was made for Granada TV! And they forced director Dick Fontaine to slip in McLaren against his will, but he couldn’t do anything about it!"

SAN FRANCISCO: Sean McCourt of the Bay Guardian has the dirt on this weekend's Lebowski Fest.

NORTH CAROLINA: The tenth Hi Mom! Film Festival, festuring an international, family-friendly selection of fifty-one animated and live-action shorts, runs this weekend starting tonight, at the Art Center in Carborro. Please note that the outdoor screenings planned for Chapel Hill have been moved indoors due to a "strong threat of rain."

Video of the Day: The New Batman Movie?

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Admittedly, it ain't Christopher Nolan. But in a cleverly conceived -- and surprisingly watchable -- example of what YouTube is capable of delivering, filmmaker Andre Perkowski brings us Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man, a detourned collage film made up up of found footage and scenes snipped from some of the same old silent movies that influenced Batman's creators, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, in designing the character, including The Bat, The Man Who Laughs and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

A happy-go-lucky approach to copyright issues ensures you won't be seeing this in the theaters anytime soon, but in addtion to writing original music for the Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man experiment, Perkowski has already shot three more chapters of a projected six-piece series, all made with the same detourning approach and all available on YouTube.

Tony Stark (i.e., Robert Downey, Jr.) to Bruce Wayne: "I Got Your Dark Knight Right Here, Pal!"

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Robert Downey, Jr., America's scamp, has tasted what the other guys are selling and found it lacking. Downey, whose star vehicle Iron Man got the summer movie season of 2008 off to a bang back when it opened several hundred years ago, has given an interview to moviehole.com in which he found it impossible to discourse on what made his movie so special, and what will make its sequel (which reunites him with director Jon Favreau and Tropic Thunder co-writer Justin Theroux, who's working on the script) so special, without talking about what makes it different from The Dark Knight. Whereas Iron Man is "a very simple movie", Downey says of the Batman blockbuster, "It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved [Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan's] The Prestige but didn't understand The Dark Knight. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? F-ck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

The first thing to be said about this is that if anyone finds that their college education helps them to better understand why Jim Gordon didn't dispatch a SWAT team to surround that boat that the Joker was aboard after Eric Roberts tipped him off, then that lucky viewer must have gone to a hell of a school. (Personally, my college education wasn't even enough to keep me from pissing away eleven dollars on a ticket to Vicky Cristina Barcelona.) Of course, Downey's harsh words for DC Comics will set off little tremors in the minds of comics geeks who remember bitter wars of words on the playground between self-styled DC fanboys and Marvel zombies. However much he means it, it's fun when these companies' star employees pretend to be infected with the virus, as anyone who ever saw Alan Moore take custody of the microphone at a comics convention in the 1980s, before he adopted a "plague on both their houses" attitude. It's kind of like professional wrestling without the folding chairs. Downey himself seems to get a giggle out of his bad-boy act. "You know, you're never too old to burn your bridges because I believe I have offended everyone," he said. "I think I've got a couple more.

On the subject of his other summer hit, Tropic Thunder, Downey has one thing he wants to make very clear: he is not Kirk Lazarus, the looney, Oscar-festooned Method actor he plays, who vows to remain in character until he's recorded the picture's DVD commentary. Speaking of the character, Downey says that "I think his fatal flaw is pretty much any and everyone's who's in entertainment, which is, on a certain level: 'Oh if they believe they're a fraud and that's creating this neurotic state,' when the truth is, you are a fraud because you've gone too far into buying into your own hype and now you're, literally crazy. I think Kirk Lazarus is nuts." Discussing his decision to make Kirk Australian, Downey adds, "I just think that the Australian phenomenon reminds me more of American as with the British invasion from the '60s. But when I was thinking about Kirk Lazarus I was thinking about Colin Farrell, about Daniel Day Lewis and about Russell Crowe and whoever was the most effective tool for whatever my thing was, I would use." When it was pointed out to him that a lot of viewers sure do see a lot of Crowe in there, Downey permitted himself a smile. "Now do you think he would see it as the highest form of flattery or do you think that he would be less than pleased?"

Jolie to Porn Star: "Do It"

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

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

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

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

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

In Other Blogs: Batman Forever

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Welcome back, In Other Blogs! I’ve finally recovered from vacation, so look for Unwatchable and Summer of ’78 to return next week. (Please, hold your applause until the end.) So what happened while I was away? Any current movies being discussed out there in the blogosphere? I mean, besides Mamma Mia?

A little research reveals that one or two bloggers had the bad manners to say some mean things about The Dark Knight, which provoked some even worse manners from the movie’s sizable contingent of rabid defenders. Filmbrain has noticed this as well. “Why so serious indeed? If ever a tagline was perfectly suited to a film (and the critical/audience adoration of it) it would have to be this three word gem created by a marketing superhero for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, the film that currently sits at #1 on the IMDB Top 250 films of all time, and has been proven to cure cancer, put an end to all wars, and solve erectile dysfunction. As with most long-underwear films (why must superheroes wear tights?), it's not uncommon for the legion of fanboys (and girls) to take it as a personal affront when confronted with a dissenting opinion…Yet with The Dark Knight, the seething anger and raging bile that's been ejaculated on dozens (if not hundreds) of pages of comments all over the Interweb far exceeds the typical zealotry… Critics who refused to swallow the red pill have been treated as enemy combatants. About.com's Jürgen Fauth and The House Next Door's Keith Uhlich (both friends, I should add) are two such critics. Neither of their reviews was intended to provoke, nor were they playing the contrarian — they simply didn't like the film. As of this writing there are 938 comments in response to these reviews…Some go no deeper than Fag!; some are actually amusing - Keep your head in Little Women and Suffrage texts you pansy, but others are downright ugly.”

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has noticed these things, too. “Just how big an offense is it to not love (or lurrrrrrvvvvv) The Dark Knight? Well, David Edelstein and Keith Uhlich might have some thoughts on that. I have not yet seen the film myself, and though I very much appreciated Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s first foray into Gotham City geography, I find it strange how predigested the anticipation has been about this blockbuster, so much so that fans who hadn’t even seen the film yet were roasting Edelstein for not rubber-stamping their excitement and the other pre-release raves. And of course those that had seen it and took exception to a dissenting view let both Edelstein and Uhlich know just how unqualified they were as reviewers because of their opinions… The commenters are, essentially, pissed off at these guys for taking this movie seriously, something which, I suppose, would be okay if their own views on it were being validated… Does a spectacular with a $185 million production budget, probably at least that much in an advertising budget, and a record-breaking opening weekend really need such a vehement, hypersensitive defense?”

On the other hand, there are non-fanboys out there who have been won over by The Dark Knight, as this Cinema Blend rant reveals. “Superhero movies make me sick. More specifically, they make my manhood shrivel up and hide. I hate Superman and his annoying, homo-erotic Narc persona. I hate the Power Rangers and their goddamn color-coordinated outfits. I hate just about everything about every superhero ever created or yet to be created. I'm not a fanboy; I'm not the guy inside the comic book shop; and I'm definitely not the guy who pays to see superhero movies.”

Of course, with the gazillion dollar success of The Dark Knight, another Batman movie is a certainty – which means we need another villain. Already there are rumors of Johnny Depp as the Riddler and Angelina Jolie as Catwoman, but OMGLists has 8 Great Villains We Want in the Next Batman Movie, including some more obscure choices. Of Deacon Blackfire, they write: “There really isn't anything too unusual or improbable about the deacon to warrant not including him in the movie.” Now there’s an endorsement!

Why So Serious? The Dark Knight in the Political World

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Don’t worry, Batfans, this isn’t another post picking on The Best Movie Ever – we’ve got that covered elsewhere. No, this is a post picking on dipshits who view anything that goes thermonuclear in the pop culture as validation of their political leanings. You’ve probably seen them by now – the “Batman is Bush” editorials, the most notable (and laughable) of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week under the byline of right-wing thriller author Andrew Klaven.

“There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war,” Klaven gasses. “Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.”

Klaven has plenty of evidence to support this seemingly dubious proposition. For instance, if you squint a little, the bat-signal looks a bit like a “W.” And…well, that’s about it, but then we have Andrew Bolt in the Australian Herald Sun, claiming that Christopher Nolan made a film proving Bush right, though he had to “disguise it a little, so journalists wouldn't freak and the film's more fashionable stars wouldn't walk.” Boy, I betcha Christian Bale feels silly now! Bolt has also noticed the bat-signal’s similarity to a W, and goes on to equate Batman beating the crap out of the Joker with waterboarding, claiming “Batman has resorted to the last hope to make this terrorist squeal, because only the Joker has the information the police need to save two goodies who have just minutes left to live.” This sort of ignores the fact that the Joker intended to reveal this information all along and that the police didn’t save those two “goodies” at all, but let’s bear with him. Bolt goes on to cite Batman’s surveillance of Gotham City’s cell phones as another telling similarity to Bush. Except, well, nobody ever elected Batman to any office, nor did he ever swear to defend the Constitution or uphold civil liberties. That’s sort of what makes him a vigilante, no? The movie knows what he’s doing is wrong because Morgan Freeman says so, and everybody knows Morgan Freeman is the voice of God (or the Magical Negro, if you must go there).

These theories really fall apart when the editorial writers equate the Joker to Osama bin Laden. Think about it – if The Dark Knight was really an allegory for the Bush administration, Batman would half-heartedly pursue the Joker for the first few minutes of the movie and then let him escape and spend the rest of his time dicking around in Metropolis looking for Mr. Mxyzptlk and his weapons of mass destruction. Yet I do think these numbnuts are onto something with the Batman/Bush parallel – just not in the way they think. See, Batman doesn’t particularly remind me of George W. Bush, but Bruce Wayne sure does. That is, the public Bruce Wayne – the drunk party boy, the son of privilege, the out-to-lunch executive falling asleep during important meetings. (And this is not even the first time Bale has reminded me of Bush – his accent in I’m Not There sounded like Dubya’s worst Dylan impression.) You could conceivably make the case that the movie is actually a mockery of ol’ 43…or you could just accept that all the “war on terror” overtones are intended to lend the movie some contemporary resonance – to make it a Batman for the 21st century – and not much more than that.

Related:
Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't as Good as You Think It Is
Screengrab Review: "The Dark Knight"

OST: "Batman Begins"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The Dark Knight is currently smashing box office records with the same alacrity that the Joker makes a pencil disappear, and as with the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie, its soundtrack is provided by two veteran industry hands in the person of James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer. While it seems like this time around, their work was heavily influenced by the seething, screeching, atonal score that Jonny Greenwood wrote for There Will Be Blood, it's still highly reminiscent of the work they did for Batman Begins.

The two had their work cut out for them when they accepted the assignment from Warner Brothers to score the rebooting of the Batman franchise. DC Comics' famed vigilante already had a number of memorable pieces of music associated with him: from the jaunty, swinging theme song to the campy '60s TV show composed by jazz veteran Neal Hefti to the brooding, chaotic main theme written by Danny Elfman for the first Tim Burton Batman (which later became the theme music for the celebrated Batman animated series), and even Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus have been associated with the hero in the past. Their goal when putting together a new score for Nolan's reboot of the franchise was to create something that conjured the proper tone of darkness and struggle without too obviously drawing on what had come before. Howard, whose previous work has included The Prince of Tides and The Sixth Sense, took charge of the main theme and the loftier passages, while Zimmer, the German-born composer who created the eerie score for The Ring as well as the memorable soundtrack to Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, worked on the incidental music and quieter, more sinister passages. It was imperative that they create something that enhanced the brooding, bleak tone of Batman Begins while never threatening to overwhelm the action on screen or make the psychological development of the characters too obvious.

Happily -- if you can use that word to apply to something so grim-sounding -- they were successful. The soundtrack, while it lacks any songs as immediately catchy as Hefti's famous Batman theme or as universally recognizable as Elfman's, perfectly captures the tone and feel of the Christopher Nolan vision of Batman. The tracks (all of which are cleverly named for various species of bats) exactly invoke the right move, from the slow, magisterial main theme to the ponderous, somber music that accompanies the destruction of Wayne Manor to the mesmerizing, atonal shrieks that go along with the first attacks by the hideous Scarecrow. It's not quite strong enough to stand entirely on its own, except perhaps as mood music for a Halloween party, but it's still a terrific piece of scoring that illustrates the right way to make music and image mesh.

BEST TRACKS: "Verspertilio", the song that opens the film and the movie, shows how the main theme to a Batman film doesn't necessarily need to be bombastic or hummable to work well. "Molossus", which is the music by which the villainous Scarecrow terrifies his subjects, is both fitting and instantly recognizable thanks to its out-of-control slithering strings. And the climactic battle scene is accompanied by "Corynorhinus", which adeptly combines Howard's trademarked heavy, echo-laden piano chords and Zimmer's crushing percussion and taste for non-western tonal dynamics.

Related Posts:

OST: Enter the Dragon

OST: Repo Man

OST: Run Lola Run

Screengrab Review: “The Dark Knight”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Christopher Nolan’s 2005 franchise re-launch Batman Begins ended with a tantalizing tease (lifted from Frank Miller’s comic book reboot Year One) that all but guaranteed a sequel: Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) revealing the calling card of the new freak in town – a Joker, of course – and implying that by his presence, Batman has raised the stakes for theatricality and large-scale actions among the criminal element in Gotham City. To mostly satisfying results, the highly anticipated and insanely hyped follow-up, The Dark Knight, takes that idea and runs with it. The only problem is, it runs a marathon when a 10K would have sufficed.

As The Dark Knight opens, a new day has dawned on Gotham, with fresh-faced District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) leading the charge. Along with his assistant and girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes, an upgrade in every conceivable way), he has put mob boss Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts) on trial and is closing in on the underworld’s money laundering operation. But he requires a little clandestine help from the city’s resident masked vigilante, who he doesn’t realize is, of course, Rachel’s “psycho ex-boyfriend” Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale).

Crashing the party is a much more dangerous psycho, his scarred face smeared with greasy clown makeup. He cuts a deal with the mob to rid them of the Batman in exchange for half their assets, and the wiseguys are forced to take this Joker seriously once he starts eliminating high-profile targets, including the current police commissioner. It soon becomes clear that the Joker isn’t in it for the money; he’s an unpredictable agent of pure anarchy, looking to reshape Gotham City in his own twisted image.

The Joker, you may have read, is played by the late Heath Ledger in his final full performance. Last week I wrote this cranky post about the somewhat unseemly hype surrounding Ledger’s Oscar chances. I’m still not crazy about all that, but there’s no denying that Ledger delivers the goods. He’s a mesmeric force burning through The Dark Knight like a shooting star – you literally can’t take your eyes off him, and when he’s not onscreen the movie misses him terribly. His Joker isn’t Nicholson’s baggy-pants comedian or Cesar Romero’s hooting harlequin; he has no name, no past, no future, no rules and no reductive “mommy never loved me” back story (or rather, he has a bunch of them, and they all contradict each other). He’s pure, unfettered chaos, and in Ledger’s portrayal, the comic book icon finally becomes one of the great screen villains.

Through its first ninety minutes or so, The Dark Knight is a worthy showcase for him. Nolan manages to keep a lot of plates spinning at once, using the insistent, earworming score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard to make action in disparate locations seem like it’s all part of the same epic sweep. But he has the same problem here as he did in Batman Begins; he’s really good at getting all the parts of the engine tuned up and revving at full force, but he has a much harder time shutting it all down. In its protracted final act, The Dark Knight blunders down some blind alleys and runs through a series of false climaxes en route to the finish line. There’s the matter of introducing another supervillain late in the game, a temptation the Batman series has rarely been able to resist. Here it’s the coin-flipping Two-Face, who has been given short shrift twice now, although admittedly he fares better here than when Joel Schumacher turned him into Jim Carrey’s cackling sidekick in Batman Forever. He does have an arc, but honestly, we don’t care about it as much as we should – which leads to the other big flaw Knight shares with its predecessor.

Nolan and his co-screenwriter (and brother) Jonathan Nolan want to make sure we’re aware that what we’re watching is a cut above the usual summer superhero fare – that it has layers of psychological depth that set it apart from your Hulks and Iron Men. To that end, they have a bad habit of explicating their themes in the dialogue, so that every character becomes an armchair psychologist or amateur sociologist at one time or another. This results in some ponderous musings on morality, madness, fate and the nature of heroism, all of which weigh down the movie in the home stretch. The filmmakers would like to think The Dark Knight is about the battle for Harvey Dent’s soul, and by extension, that of Gotham City, but we know better. It’s all about the Joker, and every minute he’s not on the screen is a minute we’ve been robbed. Heath Ledger left us wanting more, but the same can’t quite be said of The Dark Knight.

Related:
Batman: The Lost Years
The Joker's Viral Marketing: Threat or Menace?

Trailer Review: The Dark Knight Trailer #3

Paul Clark — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Continuing this week’s spotlight of brand new trailers for the summer blockbusters, here’s the brand spankin’ new trailer for the Screengrab team’s predicted #1 hit of the summer. I must say, it looks awfully tasty. As with the last trailer, this one is very Joker-heavy, but for good reason, as Ledger’s final performance looks positively scorching. But at the same time, there’s plenty of room for the other characters, especially Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, who finally get some screen time as well as a tantalizing final line. The only thing that seems strange to me is how little we actually see of Christian Bale’s performance- most of the shots of him are reaction shots of stuff with him in the suit, which makes me wonder what Christopher Nolan intends to do with the character. But I’m guessing that’s the point- Batman at his best is something of an enigma, and while he’s the hero of the movie the villains (especially the Joker) are much easier to sell. But who am I’m kidding? I’m there opening day, if not before.