The Screengrab : gladiator

In Other Blogs: New Yorker State of Mind

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

As Phil Nugent reported here earlier this week, the venerable New Yorker Films “has ceased operations” and its catalogue of foreign and art house fare is set for auction. At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir speculates about a potential landing spot for the treasure trove of classic films. “In a broader sense, New Yorker's long-term willingness to defy the marketplace realities of American film distribution never seemed like a sustainable business model. While the films listed above attracted at least some American viewers, New Yorker was worshiped in cinephile circles precisely because it often took on difficult and adventurous cinema that was destined to find almost no audience. Sometimes Talbot and Lopez seemed to be running an educational foundation under the guise of a for-profit business….New Yorker's library would have obvious appeal to "an online distributor, a TV network or a DVD company," Werner continues. Given that IFC is at least two and potentially all three of those things, and in recent years has assumed a commanding position in the distribution of foreign-language and American independent films, it might be the most logical potential bidder.”

At Some Came Running, Glen Kenny celebrates a new DVD release of Vanishing Point (which includes the UK version of the picture, containing an excised scene with Charlotte Rampling) by interviewing director Richard Sarafian. “At first I balked at Barry Newman being the star, ‘cause I had other possibilities and I felt…all I wanted was the adult male that looked like he belonged behind the wheel. And I had several major actors in mind that might have made a difference. It didn't turn out that way. It came back to me that either I use Barry Newman or Zanuck wasn't going to make the picture. I said, ‘Well, Mr. Zanuck, I'm going to make the car the star.’ And he said, ‘I knew you'd see it my way.’”

Spoutblog’s Karina Longworth revisits Eagle Pennell's The Whole Shootin’ Match. “It’s possible that this is just that time of year and I have SXSW on the brain, but when I watched The Whole Shootin’ Match a few days ago, more than seeing the film as a love/hate letter to the bottle, more than spotting its shared DNA with various films by Richard Linklater and Andrew Bujalski (and, to a lesser extent, Wes Anderson and Gus Van Sant), I saw it as a catalyst for a conversation about Austin’s evolving film cultural history…What interests me most about the ‘regional’ issue is that although Austin has become a place where independent filmmakers from all over the country — including LA and New York — come to show work, ironically, Austin’s past and present identity as a film town often gets lost in that process and excluded from the conversation.”

Roger Ebert hunts The Snark. “When Joaquin Phoenix appears on the Letterman program and behaves as a semi-catatonic weirdo, for example, he is instantly made the butt of imitators on the Indie Spirits and the Oscars, and the snarky presumption is that he is now a laughable buffoon. All memories of his splendid acting career are erased. He is past his sell-by date. The actor from Gladiator and Walk the Line, twice nominated for an Oscar, is now ridiculed on the Academy stage. Let's take him as a case study. When Phoenix was satirized on the Indie Spirits, I doubted anything on the Oscarcast was likely to equal it. The next day I wrote that the Oscar had proven me wrong. There was no hint that I objected to the portrayals. Those second thoughts arrived only belatedly, along with the reflection that if Phoenix really was ‘nutzoid,’ the segments were in poor taste. But nutzoid itself is snarkspeak, and I should have written ‘mentally ill,’ not to be Politically Correct, but simply to be decent.”

Finally, this week’s List-o-Mania comes from Den of Geek, which looks at the Top 50 Movie Special Effects Shots, including “the party crashers revealed” from The Fearless Vampire Killers. “Sometimes the oldest trick in the book is all you need. Thus reasoned Roman Polanski when his vampire-movie spoof required that the 'infiltrators' at a vampire ball be revealed as the only reflections in the ballroom mirror. Of course, the 'reflections' are out-of-focus doubles trying to 'mirror' principals Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, but once something works, anything more is pointless.”

Morning Deal Report: YouTube the Movie

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

“Producers Chris Adams and Steve Kearney are joining with producer-director RJ Cutler to create a feature documentary about a true-life love story that played out on YouTube.com,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “The film will follow the romance of teenage video blogger Daniel Meadows, an Austalian who fell in love with an American teen, Shannon Jones, online, where they documented their relationship.” If this is a success, we can look forward to Leave Britney Alone: The Motion Picture.

Keanu Reeves will strap on the sword and sandals for 47 Ronin. Wanted screenwriter Chris Morgan will pen the story “based on the true tale of a band of samurai swordsmen who avenged the death of their master in 18th century Japan," according to Variety. "The film will tell a stylized version of the story, mixing fantasy elements of the sort seen in The Lord of the Rings pics, with gritty battle scenes akin to those in films such as Gladiator.”

“Ben Affleck is in negotiations to follow up his directing debut, Gone Baby Gone, with the story of the death of Arizona journalist Don Bolles and the events it provoked,” THR reports. “In 1976, Bolles was a reporter for the Arizona Republic looking into political corruption and the convergence of New York, Chicago and Detroit mobsters in Phoenix. When lured to a downtown hotel by a source who didn't show up, Bolles was blown up in his car. He died days later.” Spoiler!

Related:
21 Stars We Hate
Ben Affleck on the Town

Thursday Morning Poll for September 16, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Well, looks like the Russell Crowe name just isn’t what it used to be. In conjunction with last weekend’s release of Body of Lies, we decided to poll you folks on your favorite Crowe/Ridley Scott collaboration. But just as Body of Lies tanked at the box office, so most of you were less than enthusiastic about this poll subject. Predictably, our readers’ top choice was their Oscar-winning Gladiator, which brought in 45% of the vote. But more telling is that 36% of you voted for “none of the above.” What gives, folks? Was it the phone-throwing incident or the Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts fiasco that soured you on Crowe?

For this week’s poll, a question about one of the filmmakers most often associated with horror- George A. Romero. Romero has recently announced that he’s going to be making a sixth film in the Dead franchise. And although I think he might have gone to the zombie well one too many times already, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t eager to see what else he has up his sleeve. But until that film sees the light of day, we’ve still got five other entries- some classics, others not so much- to discuss and debate their relative merits. So, I’ll put it to you- what’s the best Romero Dead movie?

Which of Romero's DEAD films is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

Try not to hurt your BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS! choosing a favorite. As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!

In Other Blogs: Defending the New Classics

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week, our own Paul Clark took a few well-deserved shots at Entertainment Weekly’s list of 100 New Classics. At Some Came Running, Glenn Kenny offers up a (weak) defense. “Let's begin with a fundamental fact: lists are bullshit. Lists are such blatant bullshit that any magazine person will admit to you that they're bullshit. Some might need to have had a couple of drinks first, others might be more effectively cajoled by having you complain for the millionth time in the course of a conversation about how your own favorite cultural artifact was left off some list or another, but they'll admit it… ‘Glenn,’ I hear you asking, ‘if lists are such bullshit, why do magazines and websites do them almost all the frickin' time?’ Well, because lists are putatively ‘fun.’ People notice them, argue about them. They take them fairly seriously, pretty much regardless of what their sources are...oddly enough. For a magazine in particular, a list is a potential goldmine of publicity. It gets your product noticed. TV news, radio outlets, they LOVE lists.” As list-lovers ourselves, we can’t argue with this – our weekly top 10 (or 15 or 20) offerings are inevitably our most popular posts, and just as inevitably attract the most “Hey bozos, you forgot Ernest Scared Stupid!” type comments. Heck, that’s why we do ’em! Try as we might, though, we can’t actually find the part where Kenny defends the EW list. Maybe it’s in code.

At Scanners, Jim Emerson offers his own take on the list. “From the last quarter century, EW chose Pulp Fiction as its #1 classic, calling it ‘a time-warping, mind-bending work of movie-mad genius.... Its revolutionary structure (John Travolta dies... then lives!) opened a new universe of mainstream storytelling, but the eternal joy of Pulp Fiction is that it recast the future of movies by living, so thrillingly, in the moment." I can't really argue with that, though it doesn't take into consideration what I see as the movie's flaws (I hate all the chewy, self-consciously pop-aware dialog), its negative influences (we're still suffering the ‘Tarantinian’ fallout from wannabes far less talented than QT), and its overemphasized novelty (the structure wasn't really revolutionary -- it just didn't tell you the order in which its chapters were arranged, so you could be surprised to recounter characters in an unforseen context). But I'm not going to begrudge Pulp Fiction the top slot…No, the bizarre choices on the list for me (in addition to several of the ones cited in the third paragraph above) include Moulin Rouge (#10), Pretty Woman (#37), Gladiator (#43), Rain Man (#45), Dirty Dancing (#65), All About My Mother (#69), Thelma & Louise (#72)... but I detect my own gender bias in the selection. Some of these were hits, some of them won Oscars, some had star-making performances (Julia Roberts, Patrick Swayze, Brad Pitt)... but, even if you liked 'em at the time, do you feel like watching them anymore?”

At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir warns that the indie film is dying – unless it isn’t. “Even as the potential moviegoing public has become distracted by an explosion of electronic options and devices unimagined a generation ago, the marketplace has been swamped by a poisonous glut of new movies. As Gill explains, in 1993, the Sundance Film Festival received roughly 500 submissions. For 2008, that number had swollen to more than 5,000. The reasons for that are various: The cost of producing a small-budget motion picture has fallen sharply in the digital age, and the success of a handful of indies in the late '90s and early 2000s drew investors large and small to pour countless billions of dollars into filmmaking. It hasn't turned out to be a sensible investment. Gill calculates the odds of losing all your money on an independent film at 99.95 percent. Most of those 5,000 movies, in his words, are ‘pre-ordained flops,’ made by people ‘who forgot that their odds would have been better if they'd converted their money into quarters and taken the all-night party bus to Vegas’… Then there's the fact that while enthusiasm, access to technology and an eagerness to become famous may be widespread, talent and craftsmanship are not. As anybody who's ever served on a film-festival selection committee learns the hard way, most of those movies should never have been made in the first place and definitely should not be inflicted upon the public. There has indeed been an explosion of ultra-low-budget filmmaking -- just try to wade through the self-produced movies available on YouTube -- but so far it has not revealed a nation full of unheralded Orson Welleses in embryo.”

And finally, speaking of “lists are bullshit,” this week’s List-o-Mania entry comes from the MuchMusic blog: it’s allegedly the Top 10 Music Moments in Movies. I know it’s hard to argue with a list containing both Adventures in Babysitting and Napoleon Dynamite, but really – the Wayne’s World "Bohemian Rhapsody" sing-along is the greatest music moment in movie history? Not.

Related:
EW Makes Great Movies List, Screengrab Points, Laughs
EW Makes List of Vile Villains, Isn't as Cool as Screengrab Lists

EW Makes Great-Movies List; Screengrab Points, Laughs

Paul Clark — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

With last week blessedly free of celebrities getting knocked up and/or being caught without underwear, Entertainment Weekly has seized upon this fallow period in entertainment news to unveil yet another list for your perusal. In this week’s double issue, EW’s writing staff unveiled their lists of “The New Classics” in a number of media, including their top 100 movies of the last quarter century. There were a few pleasant surprises- like #4 pick Blue Velvet making its second prominent appearance on a high-profile list in less than a week (after the latest AFI special)- and you can't really argue with Pulp Fiction at #1, but many of the choices left something to be desired. Put it another way- if you know both jack and shit about cinema, EW’s list is bound to feel pretty unsatisfactory, with a whopping six foreign-language films and two documentaries out of 100.

Of course, the makers of such lists are always prone to stating that their goal is to “stir up debate.” So in the proud Screengrab tradition of speaking truth (or at least strongly-worded fibs) to power, I’d like to go on record to state that a number of masterpieces of the past 25 years were ignominiously robbed in order to make way for the likes of Pretty Woman. On top of that, a few of the movies that made the list were so unceremoniously- and undeservingly- buried near the bottom that their inclusion is arguably even more of a disgrace when you consider the titles that outrank them. In keeping with EW’s format, I’ve kept the artsy-fartsy to a minimum- no shorts, no avant-garde, no mentions of Peter Watkins. Instead I’ve selected five pretty accessible movies (including a foreign-language pick) and one classic that deserved far better than EW wanted to give it.

But first, a note to EW’s webmaster: your online feature on the 26 greatest movie posters doesn’t want to scroll over to the poster for The Limey. Please fix this immediately. Thank you.

Now, my alternate selections, in no particular order:

The New World- to my eyes, the finest American film of the last 25 years. Should have qualified just by being one of the most beautiful films ever made, but there’s more to Terence Malick’s masterpiece than gorgeous cinematography and panoramic shots of nature. Malick’s re-creation of the founding of Virginia and the resulting “settlement” of the land is always completely convincing, transporting the viewer into the lifestyle (and mindsets) of the time in a way few period pieces can manage. But it’s also a heartrending love story of a particularly mature kind, as Pocahontas (the glowing Q’Orianka Kilcher) must learn to let go of her childish love in order to find sustainable happiness with another. The New World is a marvel, and I expect that we’ll be seeing it on plenty of lists in the decades to come.

Naked- Now, I can kind of understand leaving Malick off your list, since the guy’s only made two movies during the eligible period. But what’s your excuse when it comes to Mike Leigh? Even the Academy has caught on to Leigh’s greatness- witness the bevy of nominations for Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake- but for my money his best work to date is still Naked. Of course, it’s something of a bitter pill to swallow, with an almost painfully bleak view of human nature. And in the middle of it all is David Thewlis, giving one of the all-time great performances, as the compulsively verbal misanthrope Johnny, the kind of bastard whose sole redeeming virtue is that he knows exactly how much of a bastard he is. Thewlis owns the film, creating from the ground up a character so fascinating that we can’t help but watch him, mouth often agape, up through the film’s magnificent final shot.

Heavenly Creatures- Hey EW, you know that Peter Jackson guy? The one whose most famous films you’ve placed prominently at #2? Well, he did make movies before Lord of the Rings, and in its way Heavenly Creatures is just as good if not better. Beginning with a true-crime story that would in other hands have lent itself to sensationalism- teenage lesbian murderers!- Jackson instead crafted in alternately invigorating and harrowing movies about the seductiveness, and the dangers, of fantasy. As Pauline and Juliet (Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, in their breakthrough roles) grow ever more attached to their King-Arthur-meets-Ayn-Rand fairy tale land, they increasingly feel compelled to defend it against the encroachment of the everyday world, until the story commences in a sudden, shocking act of violence that sends these killer angels crashing back to Earth forever.

Once Upon a Time in America- Once again, Sergio Leone’s final masterwork is the odd man out among gangster dramas, with the EW writers forwarding the unfortunate notion that the genre began with The Godfather and ended with GoodFellas, with a brief stopover in Scarface Land. Leone’s film may not have the iconic status of Coppola, the seductiveness of Scorsese, or the gangsta cachet of DePalma, but as a cinematic achievement, it deserves respect, at least in its 227-minute long version. As a minor-key elegy for a crime culture that has long since passed, Once Upon a Time in America mops the floor with The Godfather, Part III, with as many classic moments as any film in Leone’s oeuvre. You’ll never look at a garbage truck the same way again.

Three Colors Trilogy- I debated including Decalogue on this list but decided against it because it premiered on television. But I had no such problem with Kieslowski’s trilogy, a wholly unique- yet entirely approachable- grand work in three parts. In telling three intimate stories, Kieslowski manages to capture a specific end-of-the-millennium worldview, as well as some surprising insights into human nature in general. But the film’s true power comes from their simplicity- Kieslowski tells us everything we need to know about these people and their lives, if only we know where (and how) to look. Beyond that, they’re just ravishing cinema, with the scores of Zbigniew Preisner ranking among the greatest ever written for the screen.

And finally…

Back to the Future- #91? Really? Working from perhaps the tightest and cleverest screenplay ever made into a Hollywood blockbuster, Robert Zemeckis and company turned what was essentially a comedic take on Americana into a genuine piece of Americana itself. How many movies of the past quarter century are this widely seen, or so beloved by all sectors of the moviegoing audience? Back to the Future is a textbook case of all the pieces lining up just so, as well as a testament to how wonderful a big-budget movie when the filmmakers trust their assembled elements enough to stay out of their own damn way. But hey, if you guys really think Shrek, Gladiator, Speed, Fatal Attraction, Scream, Beverly Hills Cop, Dirty Dancing (?!?!?), Out of Africa, and Napoleon Dynamite are all better than Back to the Future, I guess I don’t have anything left to say to you.

ARRR! Another Pirate Movie

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Can you believe it’s only four months until Talk Like a Pirate Day? Time sure flies when you’re not talking like a pirate. Soon you’ll have another opportunity to brush up on your doubloons and pieces of eight and whatnot. According to Variety, Dreamworks is going forward with a new pirate movie – not a fourth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, but a film based on another legend of the seas. For your edification and enjoyment, I’ve run the announcement through the official English-to-Pirate translator:

“DreamWorks be brin'in' a project on t' life o' legendary pirate Blackbeard t' t' big screen. David Franzoni, who wrote Amistad and Gladiator for t' studio, will pen Blackbeard, which delves into t' life o' British buccaneer Edward Teach. Barry Josephson (Enchanted) be producin' alongside motivational speaker and former Philadelphia 76ers prexy/co-owner Pat Croce, who wrote Pirate Soul, a book that chronicled t' golden era o' piracy, which spanned 1690-1730…Croce, who owns a pirate museum in Key West, Fla., be collaboratin' closely with Franzoni on t' screenplay.”

Okay, that wasn’t anywhere near as fun as I thought it would be. But then, neither are pirate movies.

DVD Digest for April 29, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: Criterion caters to the kids, Anthony Mann's final historical epic gets the deluxe treatment, and a pair of critics-turned-DVD-distributors unveil their latest hidden treasure.

DVD of the week: Winning awards at both Cannes and the Oscars in 1956, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon has, in the last fifty years become a short-form classic. It's long been a classroom staple throughout the world, and the film it inspired, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon is currently playing in limited release to enthusiastic reviews. The Red Balloon makes its DVD premiere this week as the centerpiece of the latest Criterion box set, Three Children's Classics. The set also includes Lamorisse's 1953 short White Mane and William Mason's 1966 film Paddle to the Sea, both of which are also making their DVD debut. At a time when most entertainment geared to kids seems concerned primarily with feeling current, these three films are in the tradition of classic family entertainments that stimulate their imaginations without pandering or condescending. Even if you don't have children of your own, they're well worth buying for yourself.

The week's other classic coming to DVD is the Weinstein Company's release of Anthony Mann's Roman epic The Fall of the Roman Empire, as part of their "Miriam Collection." Produced by super-producer Samuel Bronston, the film was one of the last mega-budgeted historical epics (and box-office flop), and one of the most interesting aspects of the seeing the film is simply to marvel at its sheer largesse. The Weinsteins include a commentary and a number of documentaries on both the "Two Disc Special Edition" and the "Limited Collector's Edition Gift Set," but of primary interest is the film itself. If nothing else, it should be interesting to compare Mann's film to the Oscar-winning Gladiator, which tells much the same story using CGI effects.

On the new-release front, this week brings the DVD debut of Julian Schnabel's acclaimed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Buena Vista), which garnered nominations for best director, best adapted screenplay, and best cinematography at last year's Academy Awards. Also of note this week: The Golden Compass (New Line, also Blu-Ray), which is being released in both single- and double-disc editions; Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses (Fox, also Blu-Ray); and the Denzel Washington-directed and -starring The Great Debaters (The Weinstein Company).

Finally, a shout out to our friends Andrew Grant and Aaron Hillis, critics-turned-proprietors of the upstart distribution shingle Benten Films. For their third release, Grant and Hillis have selected Todd Rohal's Slamdance-winning indie The Guatemalan Handshake. Not content to shine a light into overlooked corners of American independent cinema, Benten seeks to give its releases the first-class treatement, and Guatemalan Handshake arrives this week in a two-disc edition that includes commentary, a music video, behind-the scenes footage, short films, and an essay by filmmaker David Gordon Green. I'm looking forward to checking out the film and all subsequent Benten releases.

EW Makes List of Vile Villains, Isn’t as Cool as Screengrab Lists

John Constantine — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:10:00 GMT

Actually, I’ve got to give it up to our esteemed peers over at Entertainment Weekly because this is a pretty nice overview of dastardly personae in movies. It starts off on the wrong foot. Darth Vader? Darth Vader ceased being imposing the moment he made an effeminate, golden robot. Then Leatherface, which is acceptable but come on. The bad guy in a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn’t an exciting entry! The list kicks into gear when it starts reaching further into the past and gets unpredictable. For example, I had forgotten about the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang altogether and now I’m going to spend the rest of today reliving childhood trauma. And Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus in Gladiator comes out of nowhere. What an inspired choice! He’s a bad guy so icky he makes horrific Gene Simmons-tongue faces while watching other dudes kill each other and then tries to impregnate his sister. It’s no Ten Best Murderous Duos but, hey, what is?

You can check out the first 25 of 50 right here.

When Good Directors Go Bad: 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992, Ridley Scott)

Peter Smith — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

The setup: To celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the New World, Paramount Pictures needed a filmmaker who could be counted upon to create a handsome and commercial film about the great man and his momentous voyage. Who better than Ridley Scott, a dependable stylist best known for Alien and Blade Runner, and whose faltering career had been revived the prior year with the critical and audience favorite Thelma and Louise?

What went wrong: Scott, for all his directing skill, has always been a journeyman, making films from material originated by others. Because of this, the screenplays are usually the keys to his films' success. While no one would deny that Columbus' story lends itself well to cinema, the 1492 script (credited to Roselyne Bosch) simply isn't very good, and Scott was unfortunately unable to cover that up with style.

One problem was the film's conception of Columbus himself. The real-life Columbus was a forward-thinking man, but he was also highly ambitious, and the film glosses over this aspect of his personality. Instead of a portrait of a man driven by his nature to seek greatness, 1492 gives us Columbus, the passionate idealist, selflessly dreaming of the future. The film's star, Gerard Depardieu, could have given us a fierce, larger-than-life Columbus, but he's largely called upon to play twinkly-eyed in the early scenes and disillusioned in the later ones.

Additionally, even with a two-and-a-half-hour running time, 1492 feels rushed. One never really feels the strain of the long ocean voyages — after the first one, Scott does away with them altogether. Likewise, character development is largely dictated through tonsorial choices — whereas Columbus shares the shaggy look of the men he commands, the bad guys invariably sport eccentric, intricate beards and hairdos. The most surprising thing about the violent, sneeringly-entitled nobleman Moxica (played by Michael Wincott) is that he doesn't have a mustache to twirl along with his Slayer-worthy flowing black hair. And Sigourney Weaver, playing Queen Isabella, has so little to work with that she mostly looks lost.

Finally, a lot of the film is hard to take seriously. Consider the scene in which a fist fight breaks out in a monastery; or the hurricane sequence, during which Columbus' native translator runs away after admonishing him, "You never learned my language;" or practically every scene involving Moxica or the sinister judge Bobadilla (Mark Margolis). 1492 tried to be the definitive Columbus movie, but the best it could manage was to be the best Columbus movie of 1992, and since the competition was Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, that's nothing to write home about.

The fallout: 1492: Conquest of Paradise failed with critics and bombed at the box office, and Scott floundered for the rest of the decade before he came roaring back with 2000's Best Picture Oscar-winner Gladiator. His most recent film, American Gangster, is currently in theatres.

— Paul Clark