The Screengrab : glory

Trailer Review: Defiance (Trailer #2)

Paul Clark — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

”To all of the esteemed voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

I consider myself proud to be a part of your illustrious ranks, in the company of so many talented people both in front of and behind the camera. But while I have attempted for years to make a film that would serve as my love letter to you and your impeccable tastes in cinema, I fear I have failed so far. It seems that while you have appreciated many performances in the films I’ve made, nominating several of them and even awarding a much-deserved Oscar to Denzel Washington in Glory, I wonder if perhaps my subject matter hasn’t appealed to you as it was meant to. It certainly would seem that the Civil War, Gulf War I, Arab terrorists, the downfall of the Japanese feudal system, and even the misdeeds of the diamond industry aren’t everyone’s idea of important cinema. So I decided to take on a subject that I’m sure everyone in the Academy will agree is a worthy one- the Holocaust. To underline the seriousness of the topic, I’ve decided to cast one of Hollywood’s newly-anointed action stars (Daniel Craig- James Bond himself!) in the lead role, even having him do an accent to show what a fine serious actor he is in case you still haven’t seen Enduring Love and The Mother. And just so you don’t think I’m making a sober, boring drama, I’m going to tell the inspirational true-life story of a group of Jewish refugees who actually fought back against the Nazis. Surely, no one will be able to resist a tale that so clearly shows a triumph of the spirit (which, not coincidentally, is the title of another wonderful Holocaust movie that you might have forgotten about. In closing, I hope you will find the film as uplifting and hard-hitting as I do, and would like to direct you to the engraved name plate that I’ve conveniently included with this letter. You’ll find that it should fit perfectly on the base of the Oscar statuette in all possible ways.

All the best,
E. Zwick”

Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

WAR!!!!! (Huh! Good God!) What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...

...unless, of course, you’re a Halliburton stockholder...and, well, I guess World War II was helpful in pulling the U.S. out of the Great Depression and ridding Europe of fascism...and, y’know, we’d still be a British colony if not for the Revolutionary War.

And certainly the world of cinema, in particular, would suffer without the violence, spectacle and grand drama of humanity’s battles through the ages, since war has generated some of our greatest works of art (as well as our most cynical, manipulative, xenophobic hunks of exploding propaganda).

In his classic monologue, Swimming to Cambodia (about his participation in Roland Joffé’s 1984 film The Killing Fields), the late, great Spalding Gray suggested a potentially beneficial marriage of the human impulses towards creation and destruction: “WAR THERAPY! Every country should make a major war movie every year. It would put a lot of people to work, help them get their rocks off” (and, of course, reduce the psychic and physical devastation of the real thing).

This week, Spike Lee does his part by releasing Miracle at St. Anna, a World War II drama featuring all the black actors Clint Eastwood didn’t cast in Flags of Our Fathers, and so in tribute to both films (and all the real life soldiers, civilians and politicians who inspired them), we here at the Screengrab present our picks for the Top 25 War Movies of All Time!

25. FORBIDDEN GAMES (1951)

Rene Clement's film opens with a crowd of people trying to march out of Paris as the Germans invade the city at the start of World War II. A couple are strafed, and their five-year-old daughter (Brigitte Fossey) wanders off in shock, holding onto her dead dog. She winds up in the countryside where she's befriended by a ten-year-old boy (Georges Poujouly) with whom she establishes a private cemetery for the dead animals they begin to collect, which they decorate by stealing crosses from a nearby (human) cemetery. One of the strangest and most haunting commentaries on war ever filmed, and the talented Clement never made anything remotely like it again. But then it's not as if anybody else has ever made anything quite like it either.

24. FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959)

Kon Ichikawa's masterpiece is set on an island in the Philippines in the dying days of World War II. Japanese soldiers have begun resorting to cannibalism to stay alive; the hero, Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi), has been turned out of his platoon after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. Stumbling along in search of a field hospital, Tamura refuses to sink to the level of eating human flesh. The one thing he has going for him is that, because of his medical condition, nobody he meets wants to eat him, either. This is one of the rare great movies that might be called honestly nihilistic. It's a vision of pure hopelessness, but it's emotionally moving because of the depth of the hero's desire to believe that human beings might be better than the behavior that he's seeing.

23. SALVADOR (1986)

This wasn't the first movie written and directed by Oliver Stone, but it did represent the official arrival of the Stone we've all come to know, love, and roll out eyes at, the outspoken topical "political" melodramatist. He's never had a better combination, for his talents and temperament, of subject, actor, and lead character than he did in this excitingly overblown, impassioned attack on Central American politics, which came out at the start of the year that ended with the release of his Oscar-winning Platoon. James Woods plays Richard Boyle, an actual reporter whose stories about trying to get close enough to the political violence in El Salvador in the early 1980s (and come out alive) inspired the screenplay. (It's co-credited to Boyle and Stone, and for a while Stone even flirted with the idea of having Boyle play himself.) Even though the movie was seen by almost no one when it was in theaters, a late-year push by the Los Angeles cable station the Z Channel helped get Woods an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it's easy to see why: his hyperactive fast rap gives the movie almost as high a kinetic charge as the bullets and explosions do.

22. COME AND SEE (1985)

It’s been reported that the late Francois Truffaut once said that it was impossible to make a film that was truly anti-war because they tend to make war look like fun. However, the ultimate rebuke to Truffaut’s statement came a year after his death, in the final and greatest film by Soviet filmmaker Elem Klimov. Telling the story of the Nazi invasion of Belarus through the eyes of a young boy, Klimov’s unflinching camera depicts the atrocities vested upon the Soviet people during World War II. As the boy journeys through the countryside following the killing of his family, he is less protagonist than witness, always propelled forward by his terror at what he’s seen only to discover something even more horrifying once he’s arrived at his destination. The film culminates in the extended siege of a small town, where the boy is held at gunpoint while other soldiers herd the townspeople into a church and set the building ablaze. Throughout the film, Klimov’s dominant image is the face of his young leading man, Alexei Kravchenko, frozen in a mask of abject horror -- so committed was Klimov to eliciting this response from the young man that he attempted to hypnotize him, as well as using live rounds in some of the battle scenes, some of which (according to Kravchenko) reportedly came only inches from his head. Yet while Klimov’s methods might have been suspect, the results are undeniable -- a war movie that’s harrowing and despairing, but nowhere even close to entertaining.

21. GLORY (1989)

This Civil War movie tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first all-black regiment of the U.S. military, formed on the novel idea that the people whose freedom was contingent on the war's outcome might actually be of some use in fighting it. (Some objected to the idea on the basis that the abolitionists' cause might be undermined if it turned out that black men couldn't figure out how to operate shoes or march in formation.) The director, Edward Zwick, shows a sure hand in the amazing combat scenes but is shaky on some of the dramatic scenes and lets the composer, James Horner, pour too much syrup into the gears. But the movie's flaws don't count as much as its great subject and the performances of Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Andre Braugher (in his movie debut).

Click Here for Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six & Part Seven

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

Juno Prequel From Hell: Teenage Mother

John Constantine — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:49:00 GMT

Every now and again, I want to slap the internet. A good, stern, open-faced backhand right across the cheek of every last bit of code and piece of worthless, confounding information. It is a ghastly place filled with things that actually cause madness and stupidity and you can see the horrible effects it has on the minds of those who casually wander its halls on any message board or blog, including our little corner of the swamp. The internet causes you to see things like this…

But it also yields treasures so rich that you are forced into an awed, grateful silence. Case in point: Teenage Mother.

A mere ten years ago it would have been impossible for anyone to accidentally stumble upon this nugget of pop detritus. And yet here we are. There are three things made evident by this forty year-old trailer:

1) The sixties were insane.

2) Chicken wings are hot.

3) Quentin Tarantino must never find out it exists.

The Screengrab thanks Ectoplasmosis for these moments of unadulterated glory.

Trailer Review: Defiance

Paul Clark — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Oh baby, that Ed Zwick reeeeeeeeeeally wants an Oscar, doesn't he? Haven't failed to bring home the gold despite taking on the Civil War, Gulf War I, terrorism, the samurai lifestyle, and African conflict diamonds, now he's taking the tried-and-true route: a WW2 epic. More to the point, a drama about three brothers protecting a community of Jews from the Nazis. But Zwick being Zwick, there's much more action here than in such films as The Pianist and Schindler's List, with the brothers hiding their Jewish charges in the forest and arming them to fight back. When star Daniel Craig says, "we may be hunted like animals, but we will not become animals," it's hard not to be reminded of his character in Munich, who bluntly declared, "don't fuck with the Jews." After Blood Diamond and The Last Samurai, Zwick's got a lot of explaining to do, and unless I hear that he's somehow turned over a new leaf, I think I'll pass on this one.