The Screengrab : jcvd

DVD Digest for April 28, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, Hollywood January-doldrums releases start finding their way to DVD, while the studios continue to flood the market with tie-ins to their upcoming summer blockbusters.

Hey, remember three months ago when Bride Wars (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Hotel for Dogs (Disney, also Blu-Ray), and The Uninvited (Paramount, also Blu-Ray) all got released in theatres? If not, they’ll all be hitting DVD today to remind you of their existence. Other recent releases hitting stores this week: Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke in What Doesn’t Kill You (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Van Damme goes arthouse in JCVD (Peace Arch); Rod Lurie’s Valerie Plame-inspired drama Nothing But the Truth (Sony); and the documentary Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed in the mountains (Zeitgeist), about the same plane crash that inspired the book and movie Alive.

This week’s biggest classics release is a pair of films from the great, controversial Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, In the Realm of the Senses (Criterion, also Blu-Ray) and Empire of Passion (Criterion). Both films, originally released during Oshima’s fertile mid-1970s period, will be released with plenty of extras, including documentaries, interviews, and even cut (sorry) scenes on the Realm disc. Also today, Criterion will be releasing a new edition of Stephen Frears’ British gangster drama The Hit, and Jim McBride’s semi-forgotten cult classic Glen and Randa (VCI) will hit stores as well.

New TV on DVD releases hitting stores today include: Seth McFarlane’s American Dad vol. 4 (Fox), and the animated series Marvel X-Men vol. 1 and vol. 2 (both Disney).

And just in time for their new big-screen counterparts to arrive in theatres, Star Trek: The Original Series vol. 1 (Paramount) and The Da Vinci Code (Sony) will arrive today in Blu-Ray only releases.

Finally, with this week’s Plot Synopsis of the Week, I’ve decided to spotlight something other than a Japanimation title this time. There are plenty of movies like Fox’s new direct-to-DVD feature Legally Blondes dumped into the market every week, but this one caught my attention mostly because it hits all the expected marks for a movie of this kind. It almost sounds like a parody. Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Elle Woods may have moved upward and onward through law school, but her pink and frilly spirit lives on in her young, adorable cousins Annabelle and Isabelle (Camilla and Rebecca Rosso). Fresh from England, the blond twosome assume their fashion savviness will help them make friends at their new California prep academy in no time flat. One can imagine their frizz-inducing horror, then, when they discover that their new place of learning is run by uniform-loving, junior-capitalist snobs! After the most influential students at school frame Anna and Izzy for a crime they didn’t commit, it’s up to the girls to prove not only their innocence but their capabilities. Reese Witherspoon presents this spin-off of the beloved franchise that helped make her a superstar. LEGALLY BLONDES is helmed by Savage Steve Holland, the quirky director of BETTER OFF DEAD and ONE CRAZY SUMMER.

Translation: Reese Witherspoon got sick of playing Elle Woods after installment #2, but she was still contracted for one more movie. So instead of shelling out to make her happy, we’ll have her “present” a cheapo version to polish off the trilogy, thereby allowing us to plaster her name in big letters above the title in order to fool those who don’t look too hard at the DVD boxes. No mention of siblings in the original films, but we can always do the “cousin” connection, since it worked for the American Pie spinoffs, right? The twist this time is that there are two of them- twins, even! No name twins, but what can you do? From there, the plot practically writes itself. Fish-out-of-water comedy, snobbish baddies, little dogs, and blonde jokes out the derriere! How could it miss? Oh, and why not get a comedy director from the eighties who needs the work?

See what I mean?

2008 in Review: Phil Nugent's Top Ten

Phil Nugent — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

BEFORE I FORGET: Writer-director-star's Jacques Nolot's measured, surprisingly affecting portrait of an aging gay hustler whose friends are dying off (as he himself enters his twenty-fourth year of being HIV-positive) and who lives in fear of losing the very memories that he's become mired in. A dry-eyed yet very moving experience, this French film arrived in theaters here in late summer and attracted about as much attention as most films do when they're not in English and include plenty of footage of men in their fifties and sixties with their clothes off.

CHOP SHOP Writer-director Rahmin Bahrani, who also made Man Push Cart and the forthcoming Goodbye Solo, makes movies about people different from those at the center of mainstream movie culture, hard-edged but sympathetic explorations of what it means to be economically shut out and culturally isolated. This is real Neo-Realism for our times, and it makes something like Wendy and Lucy look like the overpraised, pity-the-poor-waif hankie movie it is.

A CHRISTMAS TALE: Arnaud Desplechin's two-and-a-half-hour, bracingly grown-up domestic drama has all the things that make the holidays great: inherited terminal illness, drunken name-calling, childhood fantasies that would make Dr. Phil alert the FBI, adulterous yearnings, repressed family resentments, family resentments that couldn't be less repressed if they were spelled out on the side of the Goodyear blimp, and bitterly estranged siblings battling over which of them will get the bragging rights for the crucial donation to mom's bone marrow transplant. All that plus this classic Christmas Eve conversation between a drunken adult and a couple of kids: "Boys, you should go to bed." "We're waiting for Jesus." "But Jesus never existed." "We'll wait anyway. We want to see him"

THE CLASS: Laurent Cantet's improvisational take on the education system. See the Screengrab Q & A.

THE DARK KNIGHT: Because Heath Ledger's Joker convinced me that if I didn't include this one, he'd come back to talk to me about it. This one is also for the woman who was sitting behind me at the Empire 25 in Times Square, who, when Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon let his wife know that he hadn't really been killed by showing up on the doorstep in the middle of the night and the wife slapped him--Ka-POW!!-- across his sheepish face, said, "I know that's right!" and who, when the wife then grabbed him and kissed him while his cheek was still throbbing, whispered, "That's right, too."

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN: Fatih Akin's Head-On was one of my favorite movies of the decade. A pure charge of sadomasochistic romantic torment, it was by turns funny, angry, sexy, and heart-breaking, and it just seemed to flow as naturally as a spring brook. His newest multi-character drama isn't as ferociously inspired as that picture was; the plot is built on a string of coincidences, and Akin lets you hear the gears turning. But it's still one of the most remarkable dramas of the year, from a filmmaker who remains a man to watch.

THE ORDER OF MYTHS: Margaret Brown's jaw-dropping documentary about the parallel, racially segregated Mardi Gras cultures of Mobile, Alabama. Would make for the double feature of the year if paired with another remarkable documentary about race and Southern culture, Godfrey Cheshire's Moving Midway.

THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN: This entry is partly a mea culpa. I first saw Abdellatif Kechiche's Franco-Tunisian family drama, a sprawling film with a basically simple story about an aged immigrant trying to start up a restaurant, when it played last spring at the Tribeca Film Festival, and at the time, I wrote a review that emphasized my problems with it, especially my feeling that it sometimes left its performers stranded in needlessly meandering long takes that did not justify its running time of two and a half hours. I'm not quite ready to take all that back, but I have to admit that, in the six months since, parts of this movie have come back and played themselves over and over in my head when I was least expecting to think about them again, and that I can't say that about many other films I saw this year. It's just now opened commercially in select U.S. theaters, and damned if I don't feel like I ought to see it again now that I'm no longer suffering from festival fever. In the meantime, I sure wouldn't try to talk anyone else out of seeing it.

SYNECDOCHE, NY: The flaws of Charlie Kaufman's long, cluttered film don't look like much to me in comparison to its achievement: a comedy about all the ways that our obsessions with death and futility prevent us from getting anything done with the precious time we have here, which does full justice to this very depressing theme yet also manages to be very funny. People who fault Kaufman for excessive cleverness might as well be complaining that action movies promote antisocial behavior. Kaufman is clever; more than that, he's actually intelligent. And he's one of the few artists in movies actively grappling with what might just be one of the great concerns of the post-modern world: how do people smart enough to see all the reasons for believing that everything is hopeless stop using their intellligence to trip them themselves up?

WALL-E: The first quarter-hour or so of this Pixar haymaker constitute the most astonishing kind of triumph: a fully realized, scarily believable vision of Hell on Earth that I felt like I never wanted to leave, or at least never stop watching. If, once the plot kicks in, it settles down into a mere first-rate satirical animated love story with a kick, I'd hate for that to seem like a complaint.

HONORABLE MENTION: Dear Zachary: A Letter to His Son about His Father, Encounters at the End of the World, The Flight of the Red Balloon, Full Battle Rattle, The Go-Getter, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Iron Man, Jellyfish, Kung Fu Panda, Let the Right One In, Man on Wire, Milk, My Winnipeg, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, Paranoid Park, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Slumdog Millionaire, Summer Palace, Taxi to the Dark Side, Trouble the Water, The Unforseen, Up the Yangtze, The Visitor, Water Lilies, Waltz with Bashir, The Witnesses, The Wrestler

BEST MOVIE RELEASED IN THE U.S. IN 2008 WHICH, FOR SOME REASON, EVERY CRITIC IN THE U.S. PUT ON HIS OR HER TEN-BEST LIST FOR 2007: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

BEST RESTORATION/BEST RE-ISSUE: The Exiles, Kent MacKenzie's legendary 1961 documentary-style look at the Native American subculture of Los Angeles's Bunker Hill. Not as great as the first two Godfather films, which also got a handsome and timely restoration, but that was going to happen anyway. This was more of a happy surprise.

BEST FILMED THEATER: the "avant-garde" production of Hamlet in Jellyfish; the kids' play in A Christmas Tale

BEST SCENE OF A COUPLE OF GUYS BURIED IN PROSTHETIC MAKE-UP GETTING BOOZED UP AND SINGING ALONG WITH BARRY MANILOW: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

REALLY GOOD TV: The HBO film Longford, Generation Kill, Breaking Bad, the last season of The Wire, the last episode of The Shield, Sarah Palin on the interview circuit, and The Drinky Crow Show on Adult Swim

GREAT PERFORMANCES: Jeffrey Wright, Columbus Short, and Eamonn Walker in Cadillac Records, Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Jean-Paul Roussilllon, and Chiara Mastroianni in A Christmas Tale, Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch in Milk, Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, Danny McBride in The Foot Fist Way and Tropic Thunder, Jeff Bridges in Iron Man, Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan in Slumdog Millionaire, Juliette Binoche in The Flight of the Red Balloon, Viola Davis in Doubt, Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight, Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler, Melissa Leo in Frozen River, Sally Hawkins and Eddie Marsen in Happy-Go-Lucky, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz in Vicki Christina Barcelona, Samantha Morton in Synecdoche, NY, Patricia Clarkson in Elegy and Married Life, Michelle Williams in Synecdoche, NY and Wendy and Lucy, Habib Boufares and Hafsia Herzi in The Secret of the Grain, James Franco in Pineapple Express, Richard Dreyfuss in W., Kristen Scott-Thomas in I've Loved You So Long, Kathryn Hahn in Step Brothers, Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road, Tea Leone in Ghost Town, Russell Brand in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jane Lynch in Role Models, Richard Jenkins, Danai Jekesai Gurira, and Hiam Abbass in The Visitor, Ludivine Sagnier in Love Songs and A Girl Cut in Two, Andrew Garfield in Boy A, Famke Janssen in Turn the River, Greta Gerwig in Baghead, Jeanne Balibar in The Duchess of Langeais

BEST USE OF ZOOEY DESCHANEL: The unofficial muse of the Screengrab got the royal treatment in The Go-Getter, a too-little-seen road comedy that marked the writer-director feature debut of Martin Hynes, previously best known as the star of the 1999 short George Lucas in Love. The movie, which also features terrific work by Jena Malone, Maura Tierney, Bill Duke, Judy Greer, Nick Offerman, and its young star, Lou Taylor Pucci, doesn't introduce Deschanel's character unscreen until midway through, though she keeps in touch via cell phone, so the audience gets to have its collective ear tickled by the entrancing sound her voice before being premitted to gaze upon her ethereal loveliness. Slow to turn up in theaters and too quick to vacate them, The Go-Getter was actually completed in 2007, the same year that Deschanel appeared on the small screen in a guest appearance on the increasingly rotten Weeds that came to exactly nothing and as Dorothy as the stinko Wizard of Oz-as-sci-fi-fantasy miniseries Tin Man. This year, she graduated to big-studio movies that sought to exploit her freshness and talent in the name of shoring of has-been directors (in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening) and tired stars (in The Yes Man with Jim Carrey). No wonder the poor kid's looking to break into music.

SHE'S JUST A GIRL WHO CAN'T SAY NO: In Boarding Gate, Asia Argento ran drugs, escaped a hail of gunfire on a motorcycle, got drugged and raped (off-screen) by a bunch of Japanese businessmen, choked Michael Madsen with his own belt only to discover that he kind of enjoyed it, handcuffed Madsen and shot him in the head, and traveled to Hong Kong to find herself at the mercy of Kim Gordon, all nice work if you can get it. She also slipped into black underwear and matching fuck-me shoes to pose for the poster, holding a big-ass gun that she was going to have trouble concealing in that outfit. In The Last Mistress, she told dirty stories about herself and made eating ice cream look as if ought to count as a violation of the Patriot Act. In Mother of Tears, she swam through an underground sea of sewage and gore, got paralyzed, became psychic, witnessed the murders of her friends by ghouls who throttled women with their own intestines and shoved phallic pikes between their legs until the pointy ends came out their mouths, splattered a woman's head like a cantaloupe during a train ride, and hung out with Udo Kier. That last was one was directed by her father. I can't for the life of me decide what that makes it all better or even worse.

BEST INSIDE SNAPSHOT OF HOLLYWOOD: Nina Davenport's documentary Project Filmmaker began with the actor Liev Schreiber, who was planning to make his first film as a director, Everything Is Illluminated (2005), based on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel. Schreiber was watching MTV when he saw a report about the effects of the Iraq War and saw a 25-year-old Iraqi, Muthana Mohmed, explaining that he wanted to be a filmmaker but the Americans just blew up the country's film school. In a fit of liberal guilt, Schrieber magnanimously sent word that this lad was to be found and hired and brought to the Czech Republic to work on the set of his major studio production. And Schreiber was so impressed with his own gesture that he further instructed that a documentary would be made to record this inspiring episode in annals of the brotherhood of man. The next thing anyone knew, there was a sullen, pissed-off young Iraqi on the set, telling Davenport's camera how freaked out he was to be "working for a Jewish director of a Jewish movie defending the Jewish theory"--that would appear to be the "theory" that the Holocaust happened--and bitterly complaining that while the most important scenes were being filmed, he was made to remain in a trailer, "mixing the snacks." Davenport seems a little overly taken with the notion that Muthana's story parallels that of Iraq itself since 2003, and way too taken with the idea that there's some larger comment to mae about the culture at large that metasized in Baghdad: at one point, she cuts from actual footage of carnage in Iraq to gruseomely made-up extras lying in heaps on the set of Doom, a movie based on a video game, whose star, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, arranged to sent Muthana to film school in London after the little fella's love affair with Liev Schreiber went the way of all flesh. By the end, Davenport herself is trying to explain to Mohmed that she can't continue to shell out money whenever he says he needs it and complaining that he's gotten his hands on her footage and is "holding it hostage." Early on, Liev Schreiber's associates say that Mohmed simply didn't understand the mechanics of how a smart operator makes himself "indispensible" to a director and so uses his time on a film set as a career stepping stone. But they can't say he didn't learn as he went along.

MOST EFFECTIVE MINDLESS SCARE MACHINE: The Strangers

SHITTIEST-LOOKING MOVIE OF THE YEAR: It used to be that back when filmmaking on almost any scale was an incredibly expensive, physically demanding enterprise, low-budget indie filmmakers and proud amateurs who either couldn't afford or achieve decent lighting or camerawork could be counted on to point to the butt-ugliness of their work as proof of their artistic integrity. But recent technological advances have made films that can't meet a certain level of visual polish harder and harder to come by. JCVD is worth pointing to as a real match of form and content, yoking its single, solitary, half-bright idea--let's get all meta with Jean-Claude Van Damme!--not just to a slack and unimaginative execution but to a visual style that makes it look as if Dario Argento had rubbed entrails all over the camera lens, or that the entire country of Belgium had neglected to pay its light bill. Here's to director Mabrouk el Mechri for kickin' it old school.

NOT ALL THAT: Baghead, Ballast, Be Kind Rewind, Che, Doubt, Frozen River, George Romero's Diary of the Dead, A Girl Cut in Two, Heartbeat Detector, I Serve the King of England, Momma's Man, The Pool, Rachel Getting Married, Shotgun Stories, Standard Operating Procedure, Stuck, Tell No One, Trannsiberian, W., Wendy and Lucy

2008 in Review: Paul Clark's Favorite Movie Moments

Paul Clark — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Starting tomorrow, the writers of Screengrab will be unveiling their lists of the top 10 films of 2008. But before that begins, I’d like to post a different sort of list of highlights from the past year. For those of you who’ve only started reading recently, I used to write a bi-weekly column called “The Movie Moment,” in which I’d explore in depth some of my favorite scenes from movies both old and new. This past spring, I had to put the column on indefinite hiatus for various reasons, but I wanted to bring it back for this week only so I could celebrate some of my favorite Movie Moments of 2008. However, I had such a devil of time trying to narrow down my list that I’ve decided to simply list all of the moments that made me laugh out loud, cry like a baby, bite my nails uncontrollably, or which otherwise rocked my world this past year. This list is by no means meant to be taken as comprehensive, but merely were the moments which readily sprang to mind while I was writing the piece. So without further ado, I give you…

2008: The Year in Movie Moments:

(in no particular order)

The little boy’s confession notes- In Bruges

“No-no-no. I kill the bus driver.” - The Dark Knight

The security guard makes his rounds - Man on Wire

Sidney’s musical vows - Rachel Getting Married

The kiss that launched a thousand lens flares - Silent Light (only one of several transcendent moments in the film- the swimming-hole scene or the epic rainstorm might just as easily have qualified)

Mike’s late-night visit (or really, anytime Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is played) - The Strangers

Peekaboo nudity - The Romance of Astrea and Celadon

Harry unveils the machine - Burn After Reading (honestly, who could possibly enjoy THAT?)

Madame Gaudens’ confession - A Girl Cut in Two

Incident at the race track - My Winnipeg

Most hilarious random line of the year: “When it comes to women, you’re Michael Jordan. I’m… Bill Laimbeer.” - Baghead

The new army suits up for battle - Role Models

Alex takes a shower - Paranoid Park

Brandi forgets her cell phone - Stuck

Black Kold Medina puts on a show - Trouble the Water

Runaway penguin - Encounters at the End of the World

Jung-rae Kim diagrams his neuroses - Woman on the Beach

Alex’s sex surprise, both inevitable and strangely erotic - XXY

The director’s big exit - Tropic Thunder

Most unlikely tearjerking moment of the year: Fred Knittle sings “Fix You”, Young@Heart

Three-way fist fight: Seth Rogen vs. James Franco vs. Danny McBride - Pineapple Express

The Richard McGuire segment - Fear(s) of the Dark

Ninjas! - In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (yes, really)

And finally, my five favorite openings and finales of the year:

Perfect openings: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes”, WALL*E; Sunrise, Silent Light; The piano, The Silence Before Bach; The Jean-Claude Van Damme Stunt Spectacular, JCVD; The Legend of Po, Kung Fu Panda

Great final scenes (no spoilers): Synecdoche, New York, The Duchess of Langeais, Shine a Light, The Visitor, Burn After Reading

I would invite all of you to share some of your favorites in the comments section. After all, I’m surely missing at least a couple of really good ones.

Steven Seagal Gets Real

Phil Nugent — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In a rare development that outstrips my ability to make up goofy theories that might explain it, 2008 is threatening to be remembered as the year when all the washed-up action stars in Hollywood summoned their last remaining traces of testosterone for a concerted, multi-media assault on the fourth wall. First, Chuck Norris allowed Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to prove that he, Huckabee, had a sense of humor, by using the uncomprehending but game Texas Ranger as an all-purpose punch line at rallies and in campaign ads. Then Jean-Claude Van Damme agreed to star, as a sadly diminished version of himself, in Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD, currently on its knees begging for a cult in selected markets. (New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott hails it as "almost clever.") Now comes word that the logiest lummox of them all, the pony tail in search of a personality, Steve Seagal, will be starring in a new reality series on A & E. This surprising development raises many questions, the most pressing of which may be, just how many middle-aged Neanderthal hulks can one cable network afford to support? At least, that's probably the most pressing question now surging through the rickety brain of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Steve Seagal: Lawman draws its central premise from Seagal's other life as "a fully commissioned deputy with the Jefferson Parish County Sheriff's Office", a position that Variety reports he has held "for nearly two decades", though he's got a lot more time to focus on that area of his life than he did back when the film career was something more than a punch line." One of his stints found him assisting with recovery efforts during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Seagal, who broke the news on a British talk show, says that "I believe it's important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana - to see the passion and commitment that comes from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in this post-Katrina environment." (Seagal also totes an ID proclaiming him to be an honorary official of the U.S. Customs Service. In what may be the most "late Elvis" move of his career, he once tried to use it to board a commercial airliner while packing a gun and had to have it explained to him what "honorary" means.) The series will also show "his life off the beat, including his musical and philanthropic activities in the Big Easy." (Seagal's musical and philanthropic activities, huh? Good luck doing enough of the one to make up for the other.) One thing that's not clear is whether doubling as a TV star and a bayou crime fighter will represent a break in Seagal's busy schedule. The star of Under Siege has appeared in more than twenty action movies that you haven't heard of--most of them direct-to-video timekillers--since 2001, and that's even if you don't count The Onion Movie. His new TV series isn't scheduled to hit the airwaves until 2009, so his most memorable appearance of this year will probably remain in an interview given by Sylvester Stallone, in which the leathery, sexagenarian steroid freak reminisced fondly about the time that Seagal ran away from Stallone's birthday party because he was afraid of Van Damme.

Related Stories: Fantastic Fest Review: "JCVD"

"Chuck Norris Doesn't Endorse, He Tells America How It's Gonna Be!"

In Other Blogs: Electoral Collage

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

This week’s edition of In Other Blogs is heavily indebted to The Cooler, host of the ongoing Politics & Movies Blog-a-thon (Nov. 4-9), including this tribute to assassination films. “A very obscure gem of an assassination film that I have only seen on television is Nine Hours to Rama with Horst Buchholtz (the seventh gun in The Magnificent Seven) as the leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi. Covering the tight timeframe of the hours just before the killing, this film examines the bitterness and motives that drive the assassin – Naturam Godse. And just like the above two films, things go wrong, as they historically did, as the assassin’s accomplices are picked up by policemen for a silly mistake. And, too, just like in the best assassination films, the assassin works his way through an agitated crowd while policemen make their fruitless last-minute dash to stop the deed from happening.”

Octopus Cinema examines voter fraud by way of Preston Sturges. “The Great McGinty has achieved a type of peculiar transcendence, especially in the current tempestuous political climate. With all the recent talk about vote blocking, mistakenly lost votes and intentionally mistaken tallies, there is a particular relevance in the film's first act in which McGinty earns his keep by voting a total of 37 times. And while his moxie and charisma may now have a bitter-sweet aftertaste thanks to the 2000 and 2004 elections, it's a testament to Sturges' brilliance as a writer and director that we identify with the big lug, even when we know he's fallen from the path. And in that suit, no less.”

Chicago Ex-Patriate finds some inconsistencies in the Cold War politics of Rocky IV. “The training sequences then turn into a sort of political mindfuck. In order to clear his head and focus on the fight, Rocky insists on living and training in the barren countryside with no luxuries, while Drago has the best science and technology as his disposal. In other words, Rocky, the great American hero, becomes a representation of Communism. He's living off the land, training by sawing logs and running in snow. In one sense, he's maintaining his Americanness by rolling up his sleeves and working up a sweat. However, he totally blends in with the peasants who live nearby.”

Roger Ebert weighed in on the election at his eponymous blog. “I stayed up late. As I watched, I remembered. In 1968 I was in the streets as a reporter, when the Battle of Grant Park ended eight years of Democratic presidents and opened an era when the Republicans would control the White House for 28 of the next 40 years. "The whole world is watching!" the demonstrators cried, as the image of Chicago was tarnished around the world. On Tuesday night, the world again had its eyes on Grant Park. I saw tens and tens of thousands of citizens with their hearts full, smiling through their tears. As at all of Obama's rallies, our races stood proudly side by side, as it should be. We are finally, finally, beginning to close that terrible chapter of American history.”

I tried to find an appropriate political list to wrap things up, but honestly, we’ve done them all better here at the Screengrab. So instead, here’s Spoutblog with Jean Claude Van Damme: Five Moments That Are More Fun Than JCVD, including fighting himself in Double Impact. “What’s better than one Van Damme? Two Van Dammes! He plays his own twin brother in this 1991 movie where they’re both out for revenge on the people who killed their parents. Separated after their parents died when they were kids, Chad was given a cushy living while Alex had to turn to petty crime to survive. Strangely, they both end up learning advanced martial arts training.”

Trailer Review: JCVD

Paul Clark — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

When it was announced that a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie was going to be playing at Toronto this year, it came as something of a surprise. Yet the reviews for JCVD were mostly positive, and I must say that this trailer is kind of a hoot. I suppose it was inevitable that the Muscles From Brussels would eventually make a movie that kids his image (what, doesn’t Double Team count?), but for something Van Damme would make this one looks pretty clever, a kind of Dog Day Afternoon meets Being John Malkovich, except, you know, with Van Damme. I suppose it helps that I watched all of JCVD’s “Classics” with my dad back in the day, so I’m pretty much the ideal audience member for this. But still, I’m actually looking forward to a Van Damme movie, for the first time in, well, ever.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Sept. 20-26, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Due to the current economic crisis, the Screengrab Highlight Reel is suspending its campaign until further notice. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and although we would like nothing more than to draw your attention to some of our finest work, such as our list of the Top 25 War Films (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven), or Phil Nugent’s indispensible That Guy! Special Godfather Edition, Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five, we cannot do so at this time. Our immediate attention is required elsewhere, or rest assured, we would direct you to the following posts:

Fantastic Fest Reviews: JCVD, Surveillance, Donkey Punch, Not Quite Hollywood, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

Face/Off: The Godfather, Part III

When Good Directors Go Bad: The Road Home (Zhang Yimou)

Dark Knight: The All Talking-Head Edition

Unwatchable #67: Nine Lives

Charles Bronson’s MANDOM

Screengrab readers, we know you share our dismay that we could not take the time to tell you about these fine posts. As engaged, thoughtful Americans, however, it is your duty to check them out for yourselves. And remember, my looney bun is fine, Benny Lava.

Fantastic Fest Review: “JCVD”

Scott Von Doviak — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Baffled. Befuddled. Bewildered. That about sums up my experience watching JCVD, one of the most anticipated movies at this year’s Fantastic Fest. The advance buzz on the film was flush with comparisons to Being John Malkovich, but that’s a reach. Maybe it’s just that I’m not steeped in the minutiae of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career, or there’s something about the Belgian sensibility that eludes me, but while it certainly has its moments, JCVD mainly left me scratching my head.

Van Damme himself stars as washed-up action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, embroiled in a custody suit in Los Angeles and hard up for cash. It’s been a long time since he headlined a Hollywood movie and now even the low-budget straight-to-DVD action roles are going to Steven Seagal instead. (“He promised to cut off his ponytail.”) Van Damme returns to Brussels, where he’s still regarded as a local hero. While attempting to arrange a wire transfer at the post office, he is taken hostage along with everyone else inside. Capitalizing on a misunderstanding, the real robbers use Van Damme as a front, making the police and his adoring fans believe that it is the action hero who has snapped and taken the hostages.

I guess this is a funny idea, but JCVD isn’t going strictly for laughs. There are moments played for comedy, as when one of the robbers prevails on Van Damme to perform the “kicking a cigarette out of a guy’s mouth” routine. But I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the head of the Muscles from Brussels in more dramatic scenes, such as when his young daughter confesses she’s embarrassed by him. After the screening, I had to check out Van Damme’s Wikipedia page to assess whether the biographical information presented in the film had any basis in reality. It turns out much of it does; the actor had a drug problem in the mid-90s, and his marriage fell apart under allegations of spousal abuse (one area JCVD doesn’t get into, unsurprisingly).

Also per Wikipedia, “In the French-speaking world, Van Damme is well known for the picturesque aphorisms that he delivers on a wide range of topics (personal well-being, ecology, etc.) in a sort of Zen franglais. Most iconic and often quoted was his repeated use of the English word aware during an interview for a French channel, to convey the notion of self-awareness as a key to success.” This sheds some light on the movie’s most bizarre, yet oddly spellbinding sequence, a five-minute monologue Van Damme delivers in one unbroken take midway through the film. It’s a rambling self-examination, surely the most nakedly emotional moment of his career, but it doesn’t co-exist easily with the goofier elements of JCVD. Maybe this experience was therapeutic for him, but the question remains – at least for those of us who have never been fans: Who cares?

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Paul Clark Previews TIFF '08

Paul Clark — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Today marks the beginning of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Sadly, I won’t be covering the fest for Screengrab as I did last year, since various factors have made it impossible for me to make the trip again. However, I’m still looking forward to it in much the same way I did in the years before I actually got to go myself. I love hearing the buzz about the new movies- whether you’re in the market for Oscar-baity Hollywood fare, out-of-nowhere sleepers, or critical darlings, Toronto has plenty to chew on. Even this year, when a number of festival favorites (Hong Sang-soo, Lucretia Martel, Hayao Miyazaki, Erick Zonca, Fernando Eimbcke) are mysteriously missing from the TIFF slate, there’s still a lot to look forward to there. Bearing in mind that I prefer to skip movies that are getting released in the forseeable future, here are eleven movies that I would make the greatest effort to see at TIFF, in no particular order:

Che- there are other films here I’m more eagerly anticipating, but of all the movies playing at Toronto, Che feels most like an event, particularly the 4 1/2 –hour screening of both segments of the film. Most big-ticket directors come with films that have studio backing, but Che is still seeking a distributor, and since there’s no telling when it’s going to be released in theatres, this festival season may be the last chance for it to be seen in a long time.

A Christmas Tale- a few weeks ago, I declared Arnaud Desplechin’s new movie to be one of my most-anticipated films of the fall, and even though this is allegedly coming out in limited release in December, given the choice of seeing it earlier, I don’t think I could wait. Besides, it’d be a way to ensure I see it in time for certain year-end awards.

Of Time and the City- after eight years trying to get projects off the ground, the great Terence Davies surprised cinephiles by premiering a new film at Cannes. Buzz on his latest, a documentary about Liverpool, was fairly muted, but no matter- a new Davies is always cause for celebration.

35 Shots of Rum- Claire Denis is one of the most gifted filmmakers working today, with a winning streak that’s even longer than Pixar’s. I haven’t disliked any of her features to date, and Venice buzz from her latest indicates this will be a worth addition to her already-impressive filmography.

Wendy and Lucy- after the critical success of 2006’s Old Joy, the talented Kelly Reichardt returns with a new film starring Michelle Williams and her dog. Here’s hoping that the presence of recognizable name in the cast will bring Reichardt’s films a new level of visibility.

Lorna’s Silence- word from Cannes was that the latest film from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne was something of a departure from celebrated recent work like The Son and The Child. As much as I love those movies, I’m also eager to see what else they can do. Aw, who am I kidding? I’d follow these guys anywhere.

Three Monkeys- a far cry from the Western rip-offs most people associate with Turkish cinema, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a genuine visionary whose films have made him perhaps the most important filmmaker in his home country. After Distant and Climates, Three Monkeys should only confirm this status.

Summer Hours- considering all the world-class directors she’s worked with, it’s sort of surprising that Juliette Binoche hasn’t starred in a film by her countryman Olivier Assayas. This film has been compared with Assayas’ lovely 1998 film Late August, Early September, which is enough to get me excited to see it.

Still Walking- with his first two fiction features, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda made two masterpieces- Maborosi and After Life. And while none of his subsequent projects has been up to that rarefied level, his 2004 film Nobody Knows is proof that he’s still got plenty of creative juice left in him.

The Beaches of Agnès- some filmmakers find their styles becoming more mainstream as they get older, but not French New Wave veteran Agnès Varda. Her latest essay film should be as chock full of dotty humor as her previous efforts Ydessa, the Bears and I… and The Gleaners and I.

JCVD- the typical pitch I’ve seen for this is Being Jean-Claude Van Damme. With that premise, how could it NOT be awesome?

And since I won’t be covering the festival, here are some links to some cool cats who will be:

Noel Murray and Scott Tobias at the always-indispensible Onion AV Club
Screengrab favorite Mike D’Angelo
Quote identifying machine Victor Morton
Cyprus correspondent Theo Panayides
Self-described Academic Hack Michael Sicinski
The tireless Jeremy Heilman
Honest-to-goodness AMPAS member Ken Rudolph
The good Doctor Girish Shambu
Of course you all know to check out Greencine Daily, Cinematical, and IndieWire. And whether you’re heading to Toronto or simply watching from the sidelines, enjoy the festival.

Fantastic Fest Lineup Announced, Donkey Punching to Commence

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:30:00 GMT

It has come to my attention that there are those living outside the Austin area who grow weary of hearing and reading about the enchanted wonders of America’s greatest movie theater, the Alamo Drafthouse. Such individuals should avoid this post, which concerns the slate of “the strangest, the most heart-pounding and the most challenging new genre films” scheduled for the 2008 Fantastic Fest, to be held at said Drafthouse from September 18-25. Here are a few highlights:

JCVD – Jean-Claude Van Damme enters the Shatner phase of his career as he “portrays an aging action star whose career in Hollywood is all but washed up. Returning to his homeland in Brussels, he lands in the middle of a bank heist and may have to actually save the day.”

I Think We’re Alone Now – There’s no shortage of horror movies scheduled for this year’s festival, but this one may be the most terrifying of all. “This fascinating and deeply disturbing documentary takes you deep into the worlds and obsessions of Kelly McCormick and Jeffery Deane Turner, who have been separately stalking 80s pop icon Tiffany for nearly 20 years.”

Feast 2 – Certainly the first sequel spawned by Project Greenlight – unless there’s a Return to Shaker Heights I’m unaware of – this John Gulager opus picks up the morning after the original. “There are more monsters and they are even angrier/hungrier,” as if you couldn’t guess.

Donkey Punch – Described as “the vilest movie ever made,” this Brit-flick named after a sexual act I won’t begin to describe concerns sexy young people “hanging out on a ‘borrowed’ yacht for a day of drugs, debauchery, and ultimately donkey punching. After a particularly jarring donkey punch in a group sex orgy, the girls on the boat realize that maybe they can't trust the guys they just met in a nightclub after all.” The first screening will be followed by the “potentially inappropriate” Donkey Punch Boat Party on Lady Bird Lake. And here we always figured LBJ for a Dirty Sanchez man.

Check out the full schedule at the Fantastic Fest site.

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