The Screengrab : federico fellini

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:30:00 GMT

EASY RIDER (1969)

I remember this one time a friend of mine was running behind on an elementary school creative writing assignment, scribbling the last lines of his composition just before the teacher collected our papers, and so his otherwise well-written tale of Old West adventure ended with a coyote suddenly popping up and devouring his cowboy protagonist. The abrupt, nihilistic climax of Easy Rider has a similar slap-dash quality (and why Peter Fonda’s Captain America would follow the gun-toting rednecks who just shot Dennis Hopper’s Billy the Kid rather than, say, driving away from them must have something to do with them funny cigarettes he was always smoking). On the other hand, gun-toting rednecks aren’t exactly known for their tolerance or decision-making skills, so a couple of yahoos taking potshots at hippies doesn’t exactly challenge my willing suspension of disbelief, even today. And considering the apocalyptic culture wars of the 1960s (which claimed RFK towards the end of the film’s production phase) and the outlaw mythos deep in the story’s marrow, some kind of fatal downer was probably inevitable. But Easy Rider’s characters don’t even get the dignity of a last stand. “We blew it,” Fonda’s biker states in a prescient epitaph for the end of hippie optimism and the rise of Nixonian neo-conservatism, just before Captain America gets killed by his own gas tank and his life savings goes up in smoke while he and his buddy die like dogs on the side of a road to nowhere. (AO)

8 ½ (1963)

Fellini’s semi-autobiographical fantasia inspires and infuriates in equal measure, the film’s whimsical imaginativeness somewhat offset by its indulgent self-satisfaction. Nonetheless, even if some of Fellini’s phantasmagoric flights of fancy rub me the wrong way, the ending is a stunner, a carnival-esque This Is Your Life procession of a director’s (Marcello Mastroianni) past and present acquaintances that resonates as an evocative representation of the myriad lives we touch, and are touched by, throughout our fleeting years. (NS)

THE LEOPARD (1963)

Luchino Visconti's epic masterpiece, set in Sicily in the 1960s, is a rich evocation of a whole society on the verge of disappearing, with the changes that Garibaldi's revolution were about to effect seen through the eyes of a middle-aged aristocrat, the Prince, played by Burt Lancaster. The film's long last section -- which gave the Coppola of the Godfather films and the Cimino of The Deer Hunter a high bar to aim at -- is the Prince's world at its apotheosis; the final moments give you a rare sense of a man feeling the summation of his life up to that point and sadly accepting the feeling of his potency slipping away. (PN)

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

For most of its running time, this Cold War conspiracy fantasy dances on the line between thriller and satirical comedy, which makes it all the more unnerving when the clock ticks down and the picture suddenly becomes very serious in tone. It's as if the filmmakers' amusement at the ridiculousness of the McCarthyite witch hunters who inspired their story was gradually swamped by their disgust at what they'd done to their country. Sinatra's final speech, lamenting the fact that no one will ever know about the true heroism of Raymond Shaw, is one of the most hearfelt moments of his film career, and the sobering end point that the movie deserves. (PN)

KISS ME DEADLY (1955)

Restored ending:

Chopped ending:

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is a nasty piece of work on the page, a misogynistic thug with a fascist mentality who lives in a world of strawmen who are always proving him right. When adapting Spillane's novel Kiss Me Deadly, screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides played up Hammer's sadism and narcissism, showing him to be a bully rather than the tough-guy hero Spillane obviously saw. The movie Kiss Me Deadly adds a great McGuffin, too, in the form of a suitcase full of some sort of glowing atomic energy that quickly becomes a nuclear blast when explosed to the air. In the original ending of Kiss Me Deadly, when the femme fatale unleashes the bomb, Hammer and his assistant Velda escape into the surf while the house explodes. At some point soon after its release, however, someone cut up the ending so that it appears that the house explodes before Hammer and Velda escape. This version won many admirers for its raw pessimism. But it wasn't the intended ending, and the restored version, in which Hammer is shot and has to be supported in his escape by his assistant who he's treated like crap throughout the flick, actually seems more narratively satisfying. (HC)

THE THIRD MAN (1949)

Despite its sincere hero, its elaborate plot, and its European trappings, The Third Man is a film noir through and through, and though Joseph Cotten plays the hero as a man on the good side of the law, he’s no less doomed. It’s also one of the most devastating film portraits of unrequited love. Even though he makes it through the film alive, unlike his memorable friend (and later foe), the roguish Harry Lime, like any good noir anti-hero, he’s sunk by his desperate desire for something that will forever elude him. In this case, it’s the love of Alida Valli’s Anna, who can’t shake her passion for Harry even after she finds out that he was a murderous criminal who didn’t love her the way she loved him. Cotten foolishly attempts to apply reason to matters of the heart, and simply can’t understand why Anna would be so devoted to a cruel man who treated her – and everyone else – so shabbily, instead of a good man who really loves her (like, of course, himself). Anyone who’s seen the end of the movie, where Cotten’s Holly Martins waits patiently for Anna outside of Lime’s funeral only to have her walk past him without even a perfunctory glance, has a hard time thinking that the twice-dead Harry is the one who got the better end of the deal. Director Carol Reed and producer David Selznick – who had argued about everything else during the production – agreed on the ending, against the wishes of author Graham Greene, who wanted a more upbeat finish. Greene was a great writer, but Reed and Selznick were right; no happy ending could have bested this heartbreaking scene. (LP)

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

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

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time (Part Four)

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

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Endings and (especially) middles are hard, but there’s something liberating about the instant rush and hit-the-ground momentum of beginnings, which is why so many great (and even not-so-great) directors are often inspired to make big, bold “HERE I AM!” statements in the first few minutes of films that frequently can’t compete with their own opening sequences. But Spike Lee, after two previous good-but-not-great at-bats with She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, finally knocked one out of the park with Do The Right Thing, which exploded onto movie screens with the sex-and-violence one-two punch of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” and Rosie Perez’s fly-girl attack during the opening credits, then jolted audiences again with an alarm clock and the fast-talking “WAKE UP!” morning rap of Samuel L. Jackson’s dee-jay Mister Señor Love Daddy, who keeps the pace and sets the scene, letting us know in no uncertain terms that it’s HOT and about to get hotter as Lee takes us on a tour of his beloved Bed-Stuy neighborhood, introducing us in quick succession to most of the major players in a world as instantly distinctive as John Ford’s Monument Valley...or even Woody Allen’s Manhattan. (AO)

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Rarely has a film’s initial moments set the forthcoming tone as immediately and evocatively as those of Apocalypse Now with its protracted shot of the Vietnamese jungle. From silence comes the sound of helicopter blades, then the airborne choppers themselves, and then the sparse electric guitar notes of The Doors’ “The End.” When Jim Morrison’s voice croons “This is the end” and bursts of napalm decimate the lush forest, the film fully enters into the realm of the hallucinatory, with Francis Ford Coppola’s pan through the smoke and fire soon integrating the superimposed image of Martin Sheen’s upside-down face, his head on a pillow facing a ceiling fan. Dream and reality coalesce in a woozy, hazy blend of longing, fear and self-inflicted violence (symbolized by a gun lying beside Sheen on the bed) that result, per the Lizard King, in “a wilderness of pain. And all the children are insane.” Table-setters don’t get much more exquisite than this. (NS)

BARBARELLA (1968)

This is more of an excuse for showing Jane Fonda naked than anything else, but the same could be said of the entire movie. An astronaut clad in a rather community theatre-looking metallic space suit floats weightlessly above a yellow shag carpet. Elevator muzak plays in the background and piece by piece, the suit comes off, revealing the astronaut to be a comely blonde, naked beneath the suit. Soon we have Barbarella floating around with her ass in the air to the tones of 1960s muzak. Cute and sexy for sure, but also disturbingly fetus-like. (SCS)

LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

La Dolce Vita has its fair share of famous scenes. The opening in which Jesus dangles from a helicopter flying low over Rome beats Anita Ekberg in the fountain by a mile. Fellini knows that any good opening needs to be odd and enjoyable besides hinting at what's to come. Here we have religion, sexy rich women, poor street boys, modern technology and ruins. And Paparazzo taking photos of it all while Marcello Mastroianni's character quietly eggs him on. (SCS)

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Much is made of the final scene, where the movie's hero/anti-hero, the racist Ethan Edwards, cannot enter the embrace of the household, and the door slowly shuts on him. The opening scene is a mirror of the end, with Ethan's sister-in-law Martha opening the door and walking from the cool shade of the house into the harsh light of Monument Valley, relocated from Utah to Texas for the purposes of the film. Ethan is riding his horse in through the desert, still a ways off although closer than anything else in the huge landscape. The camera's journey from the dark interior to the brilliant and tremendous exterior emphasizes just how small the ranch is. Ethan's visit is his first in many years, and although the film doesn't say a word about it, it is clear that while his sleazy exploits are one reason he has stayed away for so long, his love for Martha is the primary cause. The whole of the plot revolves around that unspoken love. If you look for it, you can see it from the first moment Martha's face becomes visible, all of the concern and ambiguity that she cannot speak. Unspoken truths are at the heart of The Searchers, and in the gulf between what is said and what is meant is the real history of this country. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Hayden Childs

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)

David Lynch has never been what you’d call a mainstream director -- his last feature film, if I recall correctly, began with him videotaping old Polish factories -- but despite his reputation as an artsy iconoclast, he’s also got a streak of razzle-dazzle showmanship and the ability to hook an audience like nobody’s business when he puts his transcendental mind to it. Perhaps owing to the relatively commercial nature of the film’s origin as a pilot for ABC (infamously ordered and then canceled by network muttonheads for being too “Lynchian”), Mulholland Drive kicks off with a psychedelic jitterbug scene that gets the adrenalin pumping like any good overture, then moves into an opening sequence freighted with intrigue, atmosphere and dramatic possibility like a master class in cinematic storytelling: a beautiful woman in a limousine at night...a man with a gun about to kill her...a doomed car full of hedonistic teenagers screaming towards them, and then...CRASH! The man with the gun is killed, the beautiful woman staggers off into the Los Angeles night, her memory obliterated...and I’m ready and willing to follow Lynch wherever he wants to go. (AO)

BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)

As Magnolia and There Will Be Blood ably demonstrate, PT Anderson knows how to open a film. And in terms of audacious electricity, Anderson’s finest inaugural stanza can be found in his 1997 breakthrough Boogie Nights. A 3-minute single shot, it begins with the film’s title on a flashing movie marquee before the camera tilts left and then right (like an amusement park rollercoaster), then tracks a driving car to the entrance of a hopping nightclub, and then enters the club alongside Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore and Luis Guzman, eventually moving around and onto the dance floor, to the surrounding tables and finally behind rollerskating Heather Graham. A bit of egotistical showmanship? Without question. Yet more than merely a superficial calling-card gesture, Anderson’s brash opening aesthetic stunt efficiently introduces many of the story’s key characters, as well as conveying the euphoric glitz and glamour of a California scene dominated by wannabes flirting with their celebrity dreams. (NS)

MANHATTAN (1979)

Most of the time, when a director proclaims that his setting is “practically another character”, it’s a bunch of hooey, an oft-repeated cliché spouted off by hacks who want to be congratulated for shooting on location. But for Woody Allen, it was different. For years, Allen’s films came to be synonymous with a way of life -- cultured, neurotic, more than a little wary, resolutely cosmopolitan -- that could only come from being steeped in the cultural mecca of the Western hemisphere. Film after Allen film paid homage to the city he loved, but none more so than the one named after his borough of choice. Yet true to form, even at the beginning of Manhattan, Allen grapples with his conflicting feelings on the city -- is it the world’s greatest city, or a symbol of everything that’s wrong with society? The fact that Allen can switch instantaneously from one viewpoint to the other suggests that in his mind, they’re merely two sides of the same coin. As Allen himself says in the film, the New York he knows exists in black and white and is accompanied by Gershwin, much like the film itself, which would imply that the town he loves belongs more to the past than to the present. Looking back at the film thirty years later, these directorial choices give the film a quality that’s both nostalgic and timeless, implying that even now, even with the World Trade Center and the House That Ruth Built gone (and Allen working mostly overseas), these are still part of the city, if only in our collective memory. (PC)

8 1/2 (1963) & WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

The dream sequence is an opportunity for a film to break out of the logic of its narrative and bare a character's fears for the audience -- unlike real dreams, which run a gamut of emotion, dream sequences in films tend to focus on anxiety. By breaking away from the internal logic of the film, the dream sequence can take a breath and develop an established character, and for this reason, very few films start with dream sequences. Fellini's 8 1/2 does, however, and Bergman's Wild Strawberries launches into one not long after the start. In the dream in 8 1/2, Fellini-substitute Anselmi dreams of being trapped in a traffic jam, all of the other drivers and passengers staring blindly at him (other than the old man pawing a starlet). He fights his way out of his car and flies away. Then he's flying over a beach, with a doppelganger holding a rope attached to his leg. An accountant rides up on a horse, cape flying behind him like the Knight at the beginning of Bergman's The Seventh Seal. His doppelganger insists that he come down, and he plummets into the ocean, waking up in terror. Pretty clear what that's about, right? Anselmi is first trapped in traffic, the great metaphor for go-nowhere-fast modern times, and when he escapes, he is dragged back down by his own ambitions and promises to moneymen. Anselmi starts the movie in a dream, spends much of it wallowing in memory, and finally ends the movie with dream-logic. His beginning dream is about his fear of being trapped, reeled in by his own accountants and his own professional persona, unable to fly and falling. In Wild Strawberries, Professor Borg dreams of faceless clocks and faceless people, time falling away while his own death stumbles before him. Although it's dream-logic, the meaning is written clearly and most of the action of the movie, in which Borg tries to fix the mess he's made of his life, follows. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs

Reviews By Request: Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)

Paul Clark — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

As always, voting for my next Reviews By Request column can be found at the end of this review.

The “late period” films of Federico Fellini are one of the major blind spots in my moviewatching history. I’ve seen nearly all of his earlier works, up to and including the “transitional” work 8 ½, which remains my favorite of his films. However, the only Fellini films I’ve seen after this are Amarcord (which I love) and Satyricon (which I don’t), but I was certainly familiar with these films’ critical reputations, which tend to echo the sentiments expressed by the loudmouthed intellectual in the movie line in Annie Hall.

Having just seen Juliet of the Spirits for the first time, I can’t argue with the opinion that it’s an “indulgent” film, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, since it reveals aspects of their maker that his more disciplined films could not. Supposedly, Fellini intended Juliet of the Spirits to be a tribute to his wife and frequent leading lady, Giulietta Masina. If this is the case, it’s a funny sort of tribute. Yes, Juliet (played by Masina) sticks to her principles when her husband cheats on her, and eventually finds escape from their marriage. But for most of the film, she is portrayed as a hapless victim, carried along by the whims of the film- and those of her husband.

Consider the way that she is portrayed visually. Juliet never seems to fit in no matter where she is. From the beginning of the film, when her husband (played by Mario Pisu) hosts an impromptu dinner party, the guests are garishly dressed and glamorous, while Juliet wears a simple dress and a matronly brown wig. This will be a trend throughout the film, as Juliet clashes with her more decadent surroundings. Likewise, throughout the film Fellini accentuates the Masina’s petiteness, often showing her amidst people (even her own mother) who tower over her. In other hands, Juliet’s inability to fit into the film’s world would be a defiant statement, but Fellini’s feelings about it seem to be more complicated than that. One can see that he feels affection for his wife, but he can’t resist being drawn toward the decadence that had become such an integral element of both his life and his work.

And what is one supposed to make of the way Juliet is treated by the film after discovering her husband’s infidelity? A more conventional film might have taken the husband to task for his cheating, but not Fellini, who kept mistresses throughout much of his adult life. Instead, one character after another tells Juliet that in order to win her husband back, she needs to embrace her sexual side- to be more like, say, her buxom, sexually liberated neighbor Suzy, played by Sandra Milo, who by her own admission put in time as one of Fellini’s mistresses. Needless to say, Juliet has some trouble with this advice, especially as it relates to her own Roman Catholic upbringing.

The worldview we see in Juliet of the Spirits is a decidedly pre-feminist one, and one that’s a little hard to stomach. But at the same time, one needs not agree with what a film is saying to appreciate the film itself, and Fellini uses the framework of this story to lay bare his own ideas about marriage, sexuality, and the female gender in general. Because these ideas run so contrary to more “enlightened” points of view that have found their way into most contemporary works of art, Juliet of the Spirits is more thought-provoking than a more politically correct film might have been.

And even if you’re not down with Fellini’s worldview in Juliet of the Spirits, it’s hard to argue with the sheer visual splendor of the film, Fellini’s first in color. Many of world cinema’s greatest filmmakers first made the transition to color during the 1960s- Bergman and Antonioni had already made the switch, with Buñuel and Kurosawa still to come. What these filmmakers had in common is that they didn’t simply make the change for commercial reasons, but treated color as another filmmaking tool to be used wisely. In Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini uses color to create images that would not have had the same impact in black and white, as when he painted the walls red to create unease during a scene in which Juliet visits a mysterious healer. Also striking is the full spectrum of colors found in Suzy’s cavernous home (reminiscent of a fantasy version of a brothel), which contrasts with Juliet’s memories of her Catholic upbringing, which are full of solid shades of red and grey, with innocent white on the children and the almost impossibly dark violet (not black) of the nuns’ robes. Juliet of the Spirits is a feast for the eyes- and, with Nino Rota’s mindbending score, for the ears as well.

In doing research for this review- which must no doubt seem as rambling as the film itself- I came across the following quote from Fellini:

“We don't really know who woman is. She remains in that precise place within man where darkness begins. Talking about women means talking about the darkest part of ourselves, the undeveloped part, the true mystery within… [The] problem for man is to reunite himself with the other half of his being, to find the woman who is right for him-right be she is simply a projection, a mirror of himself. A man can't become whole or free until he has set woman free-his woman. It's his responsibility, not hers. He can't be complete, truly alive until he makes her his sexual companion, and not a slave of libidinous acts or a saint with a halo.”

Perhaps this quotation is the key to what Fellini was attempting with Juliet of the Spirits- not simply translating these ideas into cinematic form, but also struggling to reconcile them with his own weaknesses and deeply-ingrained ideas of what women meant to him in his life. Of course, it’s hard to say what Masina really thought of all this, but that’s part of what makes the movie so darn fascinating, isn’t it?

When coming up with a theme for the next Reviews By Request selection, I kept thinking back to this week's DVD release of The Wrestler and reflected on the fact that I've seen only a handful of movies from the eighties salad days of Wrestler comeback kid Mickey Rourke. So the next Reviews By Request will attempt to remedy this. Some of the titles I've listed below have solid reputations, others not so much, but I haven't seen any of them. That I've seen not only 9 1/2 Weeks but also Wild Orchid (not to mention Double Team) says a lot about me as a moviegoer, but that's a topic for another time. Anyway, which of these should I review next?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Due to a software snafu involving the new polling software, the above poll may be displaying too small to be easily readable, so here are the options in chronological order: Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Year of the Dragon, Angel Heart, and Johnny Handsome. Hope that helps. And ss always, feel free to sound off in the comments section below. See you in two weeks!

Set Your DVR!: February 20 - 23, 2009

Hayden Childs — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

What a strange and marvelous weekend of movie viewing that cable tv is promising! One could even call it felliniesque, should one be so inclined. In fact, after the third part of Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai trilogy, it's all Fellini for the rest of the weekend. So you'd best bring your sense of wonder and delight, open a bottle or two or three of wine, fix yourself a delicious bowl of gnocchi and fresh pesto, and settle in!

First up is Samurai III: Duel At Ganryu Island on IFC Saturday morning, February 21 at 7 am central/8 am eastern. This is the climax of the Samurai trilogy that IFC has been showing on Saturday mornings for the last three weeks. And it's fantastic. As the accompanying video shows (and warning: there are spoilers in the video, although for those who have been watching the trilogy, the revelations within shouldn't be much of a surprise), the swordfight in Kill Bill: Volume I was nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the samurai battle in this movie.

Next, on Saturday evening, February 21 at 7 pm central/8 pm eastern and again at 10 pm central/11 pm eastern, Ovation is showing Fellini's 8 1/2, which is my second-favorite Fellini movie. I'm sure most of the readers of this blog are at least familiar with this movie, but man oh man, is it a worthwhile viewing, even for those who've seen it a dozen times. Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director of films who is so caught up in his own emotional turmoil that he cannot finish the screenplay for his current production. (Sidenote: His name is possibly a play on the names of the Renaissance painter Michelangelo Anselmi and the early philosopher St. Anselm, the father of ontology [which is the philosophy of being] and one of the first Western philosophers who attempted to argue rationally for the existence of God.) Anselmi is trapped in his memories and trying to hide from the mess he's making of his current project. This is required viewing for anyone who takes movies seriously as an artform. Another note: Ovation seems to be a recent addition to my cable lineup and I don't know anything about the format in which it shows movies. Are they uncut? Do they mess with the aspect ratio? I'm trying to assess whether this is more like AMC, which modifies movies so much that I'm loathe to recommend any, or TCM and IFC, which should be the gold standards for movies shown on cable. If it's the former, I'm less likely to recommend these in the future.

Finally, on Sunday, February 22, at 7 am, IFC is showing Fellini's Amarcord. If 8 1/2 whetted your appetite, Amarcord should be quite a feast. This is my favorite Fellini film, a fictional memoir of sorts based on a year in Fellini's childhood. It's funny and bawdy and sweet and terrifying, just like adolescence. Here's Salon's Andrew O'Hehir on why you should watch it. I don't always agree with his opinion, but here I wholeheartedly concur.

Monte Hellman's Desert Island DVDs

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

What are Monte Hellman’s 10 favorite Criterion DVDs? The answers may surprise you! “Picking ten is worse than trying to choose between my wives, my dog, and my kids,” says Hellman, and…his wives? I hope he means his spouses served their terms consecutively, not concurrently. And if he has a current wife, I hope she doesn’t see this and learn that he’s having a hard time deciding between her and his past wives…or even his dog.

But I digress. The fact is that Mr. Hellman did manage to pick 10 Criterion DVDs, among them 8 ½ (“I had the pleasure of watching Fellini shoot a scene from City of Women at Cinecittá. I was flattered when he said, ‘Ah, you’re the young director I’ve heard so much about,’ although I was barely younger than he.”), Scenes from a Marriage (“At the time the film first played theatrically in the U.S., I was invited to a private screening of the five-hour television version. As one who’s addicted to marriage, it was a devastating experience.”) and Grand Illusion (“I had the privilege of being a member of a festival jury led by Jean Renoir, and subsequently replaced him as a cameo actor in a film.”) Hellman! What’s with all the name-dropping? Did Peter Bogdanovich ghost-write this list?

Other choices include Notorious and The Lady Eve, but Hellman’s top pick is a bit out of left field: Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive from 1972. “I’ve probably seen this film more than any other. Nestor Almendros turned me on to it when I was looking for a DP to shoot Iguana. He recommended Luis Cuadrados, but I soon discovered he’d died of a brain tumor, having shot Spirit while 95 percent blind.” You can check out the full list here.

Related:
Vanishing Act: Monte Hellman
Video of the Day: It's Monte Hellman Time!

Set Your DVR!: November 3 - 10, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Whew! I'm happy that the Halloween season is over! I watched a ton of great movies, but I have horror fatigue. Let's see what the next week has to offer. There's some world-class movies on TV this week!

Mon, Nov 3:

10:30/11:30 am: The Man From Laramie on TCM. Anthony Mann Western with James Stewart. Not the best Mann Western, but it’ll do.

4:15/5:15 pm: I Am David on IFC. Paul “Freaks & Geeks” Feig directs a completely unfunny and somewhat mawkish film about a boy who escapes a Stalinist concentration camp and learns to love. Feig is awesome, but this movie is not. Consider this a warning.

7/8 pm: True Stories on VH1CL. David Byrne’s labor of love, a deliberately quirky look at America from one of its deliberately quirky pop culture figures.

8/9 pm: Me and You and Everyone We Know on IFC (repeat 11/4 at 12/1 am). Miranda July is cute and a little alienating. John Hawkes learned from Deadwood the fine art of saying everything he has to say with his eyebrows. Somehow, despite the nearly lethal levels of kookiness, July has made a movie with an enormous amount of heart.

Tues, Nov 4:

UPDATED!

9:05/10:05 am: The F Word on IFC (repeat at 4:05/5:05 pm). Catch the Screengrab's own Andrew Osborne as the character mysteriously named "Andrew!" Thanks to Scott Von D for the hat tip.

10:30/11:30 am: Grand Theft Parsons on IFC (repeat at 5:30/6:30 pm and on 11/5 at 4:55/5:55 am). Not a great movie, but it's about the untimely demise of Gram Parsons and what happened thereafter.

7/8 pm Decision at Sundown on TCM. Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott in a taut little no-budget Western. Not the best of their collaborations, but it's decent.

Wed, Nov 5:

9/10 am: The Straight Story on FX. David Lynch's G-rated film about an aging man who travels via lawnmower to make amends with his long-estranged brother. It's utterly fantastic.

11:30 am/12:30 pm: Burden of Dream on IFC. Les Blank's documentary about Werner Herzog's maddening attempts to make Fitzcarraldo. This is the rare film where the making-of documentary is better than the fiction. If you haven't seen it, this is essential viewing. You will reach the other side in greater awe of Herzog, nature, Kinski, madness, and the folly of human ambition.

12:30/1:30 pm: The Blue Gardenia on TCM. A scalding film noir by Fritz Lang.

8/9 pm: 24 Hour Party People on IFC (repeat on 11/6 at 12/1 am). Some of the Factory Records bands are stunning, and some (The Happy Mondays in particular) are dull and overrated. But Tony Wilson was mesmerizing, and Michael Winterbottom's postmodern bio makes the case for his greatness.

10/11 pm: The Filth and the Fury on IFC (repeat on 11/6 at 2/3 am). If you're curious about the Sex Pistols, this is the definitive documentary.

Thurs, Nov 6:

1:45/2:45 pm: The Awful Truth on TCM. Pretty much the greatest screwball comedy.

5:05/6:05 pm: Ride with the Devil on IFC (repeat on 11/7 at 4:40/5:40 am). Ang Lee's odd Civil War drama where everybody's on the wrong side of history.

Fri, Nov 7:

8/9 am: Heavenly Creatures on LOGO. Before the Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson directed this movie about the intensity of fantasy in a teenage friendship and the lengths to which two girls actually went (this is based on a true story) to keep themselves together.

Sat, Nov 8:

12:15/1:15 am: La Jetee on TCM. This is the best movie I've recommended yet, and it's only 28 minutes long. I recommend watching it twice in a row, then waiting two weeks and watching it again. See what you remember about it. Watch Vertigo again in the meantime.

1/2 am: The Trip on TCM. This is, like, whoa. And then you'll be all what? And then, man, like, you know, then, you'll get it. And you'll be all really? But you'll know.

7/8 am: Sanshiro Sugata II on IFC. Kurosawa's third film, the sequel to his first. The climactic scene is scarred pretty badly, but Kurosawa's eye is as sharp as ever.

9:30/10:30 am: Picnic at Hanging Rock on IFC (repeat at 4:15/5:15 pm and on 11/9 at 4/5 am). Peter Weir's second feature film, this is an existential horror film. Several girls and a teacher disappear on an outing to Hanging Rock. One girl turns up mysteriously days later. The disparity between the proper Victorian British and the great untamed Australian Outback serves to heighten the oddness of this movie.

Sun, Nov 9:

7/8 am: Amarcord on IFC. The most felliniesque of Fellini films. One of his last major films. I have never thought it was as good as 8 1/2, but it still packs a punch.

9:05/10:05 am: Umberto D on IFC. De Sica's neorealist classic about an old man cast aside by society. Prepare for tears and a greater awareness of the plight of the elderly. You'll never be able to name a dog "Flike."

9:15/10:15 am: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek on TCM. What a conundrum! Umberto D and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek playing at the same time! This is a fantastic, censor-baiting Preston Sturges comedy. Eddie Bracken may not be the greatest male lead ever, but the jokes come hard and fast.

1:15/2:15 pm: The Cars That Ate Paris on IFC. Peter Weir's first feature film. I've never seen it, but it's bound to be interesting.

8/9 pm: Wild at Heart on IFC (repeat on 11/10 at 2/3 am). This may be David Lynch's worst film. Or maybe it's the one with Sting. Hard to say, but there's still something worthwhile in each.

Mon, Nov 10:

8:20/9:20 am: The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years on IFC (repeat at 3/4 pm). Don't let too many years pass without watching Ozzy make breakfast.

2:45/3:45 pm: Becket on TCM. It's Oscar-bait, sure, but not a bad movie.

Set Your DVR!: October 27 - November 3, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Halloween week means more vintage horror! TCM in particular is even exceeding their own high standards this week, shoehorning in a night of Billy Wilder on Tuesday (nothing is recommended because everything is fairly well-known) and a few film noir classics on Wednesday before cranking up the scary on Thursday. As always, let me know in comments if you see something I shouldn’t have missed!

Mon, Oct 27:

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. As I said last week, it’s not a great movie, but it has a few iconic scenes.

Tues, Oct 28:

5/6 am: The Invisible Man on AMC. Based on Ralph Ellison’s classic novel of race in America... whoops, that’s not right. No one’s ever made that movie. This is James Whale’s classic horror film starring Claude Rains.

6:45/7:45 am: Bride of Frankenstein on AMC. And this is James Whale’s frankenlady movie.

7/8 am: The Desperate Hours on TCM. Neat little thriller about convicts on the lam starring Humphrey Bogart.

11 pm/12 am: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Wed, Oct 29:

1/2 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat. Last time I’m going to mention it, in fact.

7/8 pm: Murder, My Sweet on TCM. Killer adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.

10:45/11:45 pm: Out of the Past on TCM. Film noir classic with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, who also made three of the Val Lewton-produced no-budget horror films we’re recommending this week.

Thurs, Oct 30:

12:30/1:30 am: They Live By Night on TCM. Earlier movie based on the same source material as Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us, which is one of his most underappreciated movies.

3/4 am: House of Wax on CHILLER. Vincent Price’s classic. Note: You will not see Paris Hilton in this movie.

3:45/4:45 am: The Thing From Another World on TCM. Howard Hawks directing an early sci-fi/horror movie. The John Carpenter movie The Thing was a remake.

6:30/7:30 am: The Beast with Five Fingers on TCM. FIVE WHOLE FINGERS! YAAAAAARGH!

7:30/8:30 am: 8 Women on LOGO. Francois Ozon assembles every major French actress of our time for a half-musical/half-murder mystery.

8/9 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Jacques Tourneur doing horror on a Val Lewton production.

9:15/10:15 am: Curse of the Demon on TCM. Recut version of the horror film Night of the Demon. Directed by Jacques Tourneur applying what he has learned from doing horror on Val Lewton productions.

10:45/11:45 am: Gerry on IFC (repeat at 4/5 pm and on 11/31 at 4:10/5:10 am). I just keep recommending it!

5:30/6:30 pm: House of Usher on TCM. Roger Corman! Vincent Price! Edgar Allan Poe! You might be surprised to learn that this is a tender romantic comedy.

7/8 pm: Dead of Night on TCM. Creepy little horror anthology from Ealing Studios. And no Sir Alec Guinness to be found!

Fri, Oct 31:

A quick note: TCM owns Halloween programming. You can’t go wrong with anything they’re showing all day.

1/2 am: Kwaidan on TCM. A beloved Japanese horror anthology.

3:45/4:45: Spirits of the Dead on TCM. A triptych of short films from Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini (which of these names is not like the others?). I’ve never seen it, but the cast of Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot, Terence Stamp, and Alain Delon sounds promising.

6:30/7:30 am: Cat People on TCM. More Lewton & Tourneur!

7/8 am: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC. Still brilliant, still vile.

8/9 am: Freaks on TCM.

8:30/9:30 am: Halloween on AMC. Halloween? Hasn’t everyone seen this? I suspect that some people have forgotten how effective it is with almost no budget and no special effects.

9:15/10:15 am: The Devil Doll on TCM. How many ways can I say “creepy”? This one’s directed by the creator of Freaks, Tod Browning.

2:30/3:30 pm: The Body Snatcher on TCM. More Val Lewton! With Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi!

4/5 pm: Bedlam on TCM. And even more Val Lewton! This one’s with just Karloff.

7/8 pm: The Host on G4. Korean horror movie with great special effects and a cruel sense of humor.

Sat, Nov 1:

1/2 am: The Host on G4 (repeats at 11/12 am).

1:30/2:30 am: Blood Feast on TCM. Things start getting ugly overnight at TCM. This is a challenger to Plan 9 From Outer Space for the coveted Worst Movie Ever award. Highly recommended! Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, whom you can read more about in our very own Scott Von Doviak’s excellent book Hick Flicks, which is a perfect stocking-stuffer for the film geek in your family.

2:45/3:45 am: 2,000 Maniacs on TCM. A follow-up to Blood Feast. I understand that the name is misleading, as Lewis only had to budget for 1,986 maniacs.

3/4 am: The Blob on CHILLER (Repeat at 6:00 am/7:00 am). Steve McQueen in the no-budget flick that might just be a parable about the insidious effects of CREEPING COMMUNISM! BOOGA BOOGA! Starring Barack Obama’s tax policies as The Blob and Sarah Palin as the small-town mayor who knows how to stop it. If only the people will listen!

5:15/6:15 am: Forbidden Planet on TCM. Ah, the horror is starting to subside. What better way to recover than a movie that puts Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space?

7/8 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. One of the finest classic Westerns of all time. Starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.

7/8 am: Sanshiro Sugata on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s first film, this is a standard issue wuxia film in terms of plot and progression, but with Kurosawa’s unerring eye behind the lens, there’s moments of stunning beauty to be found. Unreleased on DVD, and a must for Kurosawa fanatics.

9:30/10:30 am: The Last Wave on IFC (repeat at 2:45/3:45 pm). Richard Chamberlain’s most shocking role (in which discernible acting can be detected!) about apocalyptic aboriginal weirdness in Australia. Directed by Peter Weir.

Sun, Nov 2:

Happy birthday to my mom and my brother-in-law Jeff!

7/8 am: Solaris on IFC. This is the Tarkovsky original, not the Soderbergh remake. A deeply sad, meditative movie about love and self and Otherness. I’m being purposely vague, but this review is only two sentences, and this movie deserves much more than that.

8:30/9:30 am: Macbeth on TCM. Orson Welles’s Macbeth with the bad accents and great filmmaking.

5:35/6:35 pm: The New World on IFC. Terrence Malick’s film about how struggle defines all human relationships, despite the transcendental indifference of nature. Did I just write that? This is easily one of the best films of the last decade, so just watch it.

8/9 pm: The Proposition on IFC (repeat on 11/3 at 1:15/2:15 am). John Hillcoat’s Aussie Western written by Nick Cave. It wants to be a Peckinpah movie, but it’s not even a Boetticher. That’s not to say it’s worthless, but it bites off more than it can chew. Hillcoat’s the director of the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I hope is better than this.

9:45/10:45 pm: The Year of Living Dangerously on TCM. Remember when Mel Gibson could act? Good times. Oh, ok. This is most definitely not a good time. Directed by Peter Weir.

11 pm/12 am (11/3): True Stories on VH1CL (repeat on 11/3 at 7/8 pm). It’s not a good movie, but it’s fun. This is David Byrne’s labor of love, a deliberately quirky look at America from one of its deliberately quirky pop culture figures. The Talking Heads songs aren’t their best, but they’re pretty good, and pretty good looks good from here.

Mon, Nov 3:

3/4 am: Isle of the Dead on CHILLER. Another Val Lewton production! Why is it on after Halloween? Apparently CHILLER has started the Halloween 2009 season early.

5:05/6:05 am: Tom Dowd & the Language of Music on IFC (repeat at 12:30/1:30 pm). Delightful documentary about the man with the golden ear who flawlessly recorded some of the greats of 20th century music.

10:05/11:05 am: The New World on IFC. Repeat.

10:30/11:30 am: The Man From Laramie on TCM. Anthony Mann Western with James Stewart. Not the best Mann Western, but it’ll do.

8/9 pm: Me and You and Everyone We Know on IFC (repeat 11/4 at 12/1 am). Miranda July is cute and a little alienating. John Hawkes learned from Deadwood the fine art of saying everything he has to say with his eyebrows. Somehow, despite the nearly lethal levels of quirk, July has made a movie with an enormous amount of heart.

DVD Digest for April 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a cinematic master gets the Eclipse treatment, and a viral-marketing-phenom makes its DVD debut.

DVD of the Week: In the past few years, a number of Yasujiro Ozu films have made their way to DVD, but he was so prolific that there are still many films missing, especially from his earlier work. For this reason alone, the arrival Eclipse Series 10: Silent Ozu- Three Family Comedies is cause for celebration. Comprised of three films made between 1931 and 1933, the Silent Ozu box has no extras to speak of (Eclipse doesn't really do extras), but each film features a brand-new score by silent-film composer Donald Sosin, as well as the high-quality transfers we've come to expect from the Criterion family. To date, I've only seen the box's centerpiece film, I Was Born, But..., but that film and the other Ozus I've seen have been so delightful that I have no reservations about recommending the other films- 1933's Passing Fancy and 1931's Tokyo Chorus- as well. Here's hoping that Eclipse continues to do right by Ozu in the years to come. He's certainly worth it.

Releasing today from Criterion itself is Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bardem's seminal, long-overlooked melodrama Death of a Cyclist. The class-oriented of a respected professor whose life goes into freefall when after a hit-and-run accident, the film is at times heavyhanded but always striking and beautifully shot. In addition, the film should provide a fitting introduction for many moviegoers to the charms of leading lady Lucia Bosé. An Italian stunner with screen presence to burn, Bosé was a mainstay of the early films of Michelangelo Antonioni, as well as appearing in work by Buñuel, Fellini, and Marguerite Duras. The DVD also includes a featurette on the life and work of Bardem, but the real story is the film which, like its female lead, is ripe for rediscovery.

Also of note on the classics front is the release of four comedies from Universal's Cinema Classics series. The four films are: the Mae West/Cary Grant vehicle She Done Him Wrong; Billy Wilder's early film The Major and the Minor starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland; and two films from director Mitchell Leisen, 1939's Midnight starring Claudette Colbert, and 1937's Easy Living with Jean Arthur. Each film is a gem, but of particular note is Easy Living, perhaps the greatest film written by Preston Sturges before he reigned over Hollywood comedy in the 1940s. And if it's sexy action you want, check out Image's new DVD of the Shaw Brothers cult classic Intimate Confessions of a chinese Courtesan, a movie I'm pretty sure I dreamed one night.

Compared to this week's selection of classics, the new titles can't help but look a little paltry. The big-ticket DVD this week is of course Cloverfield (Paramount), the Matthew Reeves/JJ Abrams rampaging-monster movie. For me, the film was never so much fun as when I first saw the trailer before Transformers, but the DVD should give people a chance to approach the film separated from all the hype. This week also brings a Philip Seymour Hoffman double feature, with Hoffman hitting DVD shelves with Tamara Jenkins' The Savages (Fox)- in which he appears opposite Laura Linney- and his caustic, Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War (Universal), which also features mediocre turns by Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and a pretty hot scene in which Emily Blunt slinks down the stairs wearing only a man's dress shirt.

In addition, there's a trifecta of indie releases hitting the market today: Andrew Wagner's Starting Out in the Evening (Lionsgate), which garnered awards buzz for the ever-dependable Frank Langella; Paul Schrader's The Walker (ThinkFilm), featuring Woody Harrelson as a too-helpful escort for society women; and Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs (Genius Productions), starring "mumblecore" darling Greta Gerwig. Also worth mentioning are the second season of Friday Night Lights (Universal), J.A. Bayona's supernatural chiller The Orphanage (New Line, also Blu-Ray), and the mostly-ignored Hollywood remake of One Missed Call (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Mind you, the latter is only worth mentioning for the sake of completism, but there you go.

Finally, David Huddleston would like the announce that there are no HD-DVDs hitting the market today. Frankly, he couldn't be happier.

"Green Porno": Isabella Rossellini's Dirty Bug Show

Phil Nugent — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Isabella Rossellini, once thought of as a bit of a muse figure, is turning into the quite the one-woman show. In My Dad Is 100 Years Old, th short film tribute to her father, Roberto Rossellini, that Guy Maddin directed from her own screenplay, she played herself, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, David O. Selznick, and Charlie Chaplin, one or two of which must have constituted a stretch for her. Now she's on the festival circuit, the Sundance Channel, and maybe your cell phone with a series of really short (one-minute) films, collectively known as Green Porno, that she wrote and co-directed with Jody Shapiro, and which star Rossellini as various insects explaining their mating rituals. Rossellini talked about the series with Deborah Solomons, who hit her straight up with the most obvious question about all this: why did she choose to play the male insects? Rossllini: "I am a ham. It makes people laugh when I play the male. So I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite." Solomon: "But aren’t the females more interesting, if only because they rule the bug world?" Rossellini:: "Can I say something? I am sorry. I didn’t want to make a feminist statement by saying the female praying mantis eats the male, so, Watch out, husbands." Solomon:: "Maybe your interest in bugs was spawned by David Lynch, who cast you in your first major film, Blue Velvet, and presented a view of the world in which red ants are teeming beneath every beautiful surface." Rossellini: "Oh, David must have chosen red ants because they are known to bite; they have a painful bite." For some reason, this reminds the reader of the story that Lynch broke up with her over the telephone. Maybe he really is a Martian.

Hat on Film

Peter Smith — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

The fall issue of The High Hat, a quarterly online journal of arts and culture, debuted on Wednesday. I'm one of the magazine’s editors, and my fellow Screengrab stalwart Phil Nugent is a regular contributor. Each issue of the Hat is built around a theme, and this time it’s "Places"; some of the current issue’s articles on how geographical space informs film include Erica Jahneke’s piece on the depiction of post-9/11 New York in film and television, film critic and Hick Flicks author Scott Von Doviak on Stephen King’s Maine on screen, and Shauna McKenna on Fellini’s Roma and Wenders’ Tokyo-Ga. Elsewhere, in the High Hat’s regular "Nitrate" film section, Gary Mairs discusses cinema’s 2007 "Summer of Loss"; Hayden Childs looks at Gerry, Grizzly Man and other recent films featuring man at the mercy of nature; Kevin Fullam reviews the treatment of mental illness on screen, and our own Phil Nugent pays tribute to George Segal, the "forgotten actor" of '70s cinema. — Leonard Pierce