The Screengrab : jim carrey

Christina Aguilera Goes Burlesque

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

“Christina Aguilera will make her screen debut for Screen Gems in Burlesque, a contemporary musical that Steven Antin will direct,” Variety reports. “Aguilera will play an ambitious smalltown girl with a big voice who finds love, family and success in a Los Angeles neo-burlesque club that appears to be right out of Bob Fosse's Cabaret.” It does sound like a premise tailor-made for her talents, you must admit.

Jim Carrey has become Reese Witherspoon. Used Guys, previously envisioned as a vehicle for Carrey and Ben Stiller, has been revamped as a Stiller/Witherspoon pairing. “ The comedy takes place in a future run by women, who clone and trade men like used cars. Stiller and Carrey were to play returned, outdated models who go in search of their masculinity. The current take at Fox focuses more on the relationship between Stiller's character and Witherspoon's clone owner,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Thar be whales here! Warner Bros. is bringing Everybody Loves Whales to the screen, based on “the true 1988 tale of the rescue of a trio of California gray whales found under the ice of the Arctic Circle near Barrow, Alaska. Over a two-week period, the U.S. and Soviet governments joined with oil company execs, environmental activists, Eskimos, businessmen and military officers to help free the giant mammals,” Variety reports.

Yesterday's Hits: There's Something About Mary (1998, Peter and Bobby Farrelly)

Paul Clark — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Nowadays, it seems like Hollywood blockbusters are more or less pre-ordained. With budgets routinely crossing the $100 million mark and marketing costs often running into the tens of millions, studios leave very little to chance. By the time movies actually hit multiplexes, the Hollywood hype machine has done its job, and audiences have little choice but to do as they’re told, lining up for movies on opening weekend before moving along to the next big thing. However, occasionally a movie will break free of this usual pattern by striking a chord with audiences. For example, Titanic transcended normal blockbuster status to become a must-see movie, ruling the box office for several months on its way to raking in the highest domestic gross in history. But the following summer brought a word-of-mouth hit that, while it didn’t make Titanic money, completely shattered box-office expectations. The movie was There’s Something About Mary.

Most Hollywood pundits weren’t expecting a whole lot from There’s Something About Mary. In a summer filled with big stars and big budgets, it was a broad comedy with no A-list draws. Leading lady Cameron Diaz made a splash with her debut opposite comedy king Jim Carrey in The Mask, but since then she’d appeared mostly in independent fare, with her only other hit being 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding, in which she played a supporting role. Likewise, her costars Matt Dillon and Ben Stiller were hardly major draws- Dillon was seen by many as an aging 80s teen idol who had since entered his character-actor phase, while Stiller was still more of a cult figure than a mainstream star. And while directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly had previously made the popular Dumb & Dumber, its success had been largely attributed to the presence of Carrey in the lead.

Following a series of enormously successful test screenings, the executives at Fox began to realize that they had something big on their hands, if only they played their cards right. Rather than sticking to the usual marketing tactics, they decided to let the movie sell itself, booking an unusually large number of preview screenings across the country, in the hope that the advance word of mouth would boost the film’s box office performance. The gamble paid off, although not right away- Mary was released in mid-July, between the summer’s biggest juggernauts, Armageddon and Saving Private Ryan. But while these movies dominated their first few weekends, Mary opened fairly strongly and maintained this strength as its competitors began to lose steam. Finally, in its eighth weekend of release, There’s Something About Mary topped the box-office charts- a phenomenon that was almost unprecedented.

In retrospect, it’s not hard to see why audiences responded strongly to There’s Something About Mary. In the early nineties, many people started to tire of tepid PG-13 comedies, and hard-R laffers geared to adult audiences began to grow in popularity, in the process making stars out of people like Carrey and Adam Sandler. With Mary, the Farrellys tackled subject matter (and bodily functions) that had previously been taboo in big-budget comedies, and much of the film’s buzz centered around its sheer outrageousness. But there was more to Mary than dirty jokes. Most of the scatological comedies being made at the time were buddy movies, in which the female characters were mostly there for decorative purposes.

By contrast, Mary was at its heart a love story about a woman (Diaz) who attracts all the wrong men, and the mishap-prone guy (Stiller) who is her one perfect match. By breaking away from the usual formula for the genre, the Farellys were able to attract female viewers as well as male, making it the year’s mostly unlikely date movie. And in addition to the jokes themselves, the movie offered Diaz as a kind of dream girlfriend for the men in the audience- beautiful, yes, but also able to drink beer, hit golf balls, and talk about sports as well as any guy. Understandably, Diaz made the leap to A-list status on the basis of her Mary performance, and Stiller quickly became a hot commodity as well.

A decade later, it’s the romance that remains the most successful aspect of the movie, keeping the plot grounded even at its most outrageous. Diaz hasn’t been this appealing before or since, in part because the Farrellys understood her appeal. Many filmmakers have cast Diaz in daffy roles or as the sexpot, but her beauty isn’t so much sultry as baby-doll cute. Stiller makes a good match for Diaz- he’s good-looking enough that the relationship doesn’t seem too far fetched, but looks enough like an every-guy that the outcome of the story is hardly a foregone conclusion. And it says a lot about the Farrellys’ worldview that out of all the (mostly very strange) men who pine for Mary, the one we’re meant to root for is the one who is able to see her as a friend instead of an idealized lust object. When a man can have an extended conversation with a woman about the possibility of “meat in a cone,” the two of them must get along pretty well.

On the other hand, the wackier stuff hasn’t dated nearly so well. At the time of the film’s release, much of the buzz centered around such scenes as Stiller’s zipper mishap and the infamous “hair gel” gag, but now that the shock is worn off they come off not so much funny as desperate. There’s a certain comedic logic to the zipper scene, as one person after another crowds into Mary’s powder room to survey the damage (a nod to the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera), but the scene’s “money shot” is nothing but an oh-no-they-didn’t sight gag. And the hair gel bit just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, either narratively or physically.

Likewise, the rogue’s gallery of crazy supporting characters wears thin pretty quickly. Matt Dillon’s performance as the untrustworthy shamus Pat Healy is growing on me, mostly because his performance acknowledges the disconnect between the hard-boiled sleazy detective Healy imagines himself to be and the manic loser he actually is. And when he’s trying to play smooth he’s a scream, especially during his priceless “retards” speech. But Chris Elliott is downright creepy as Stiller’s friend with a secret, and Lee Evans’ performance isn’t nearly as funny as the Farrellys think it is. When the camera lingers on his attempts to navigate a pair of crutches, it’s kind of pathetic, and once we find out the truth about Evans’ character, he futzes with an American accent so unconvincing that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

In the past decade or so, There’s Something About Mary has failed to live up to the “funniest movie ever” hype that once surrounded it. Yet considered in light of the Farrelly brothers’ more recent films, it may be more interesting now than it ever was. After Mary, the Farrellys were Hollywood’s reigning kings of lowbrow humor, but after their disappointing follow-up Me, Myself & Irene, their subsequent projects have grown less reliant on sight gags, generally favoring a more gentle, character-based kind of comedy. So far, these opposing comedic impulses achieved their most ideal balance in the brothers’ most personal film (and in my opinion, their best), 2003’s Stuck on You, but this shift was already evident in Mary, even if we didn’t know it yet. There’s Something About Mary may not be as uproariously funny as it was, but it’s a key film in the careers of its makers, and one without whose success their subsequent works may not have been possible.

Thursday Poll for April 9, 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Last week’s April Fool’s Day festivities got the Screengrab thinking about cinematic goof-offs past and present. Bringing old and new together was the announcement of the cast of the Farelly brothers’ upcoming Three Stooges project, and we asked you which of the casting choices you found most intriguing. Of the three announced actors, your top choice was perhaps the most unlikely- Benicio Del Toro as trio’s cranky ringleader, Moe. Bringing in a full 50% of the vote, Del Toro bested his future cast mates, Jim Carrey as Curly (who got a scant 6%) and Sean Penn as Larry (13%). Interestingly enough, the second most popular choice was a joke inclusion on my part- Iggy Pop as himself- although considering the Farellys’ history of stunt casting in small roles, I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds his way into the movie. And for the record, “What? This casting sucks!” tied with Penn at 13%.

In addition, for our bonus poll last week, we attempted to settle the age-old Keaton vs. Chaplin debate. The results found 2/3 of you preferring Keaton, with the rest partial to Chaplin. However, it’s perfectly okay for you to like both, each in his own way. Reader Brandon even threw out an interesting option, “Keaton for shorts, Chaplin for features.” Any way’s fine with us- we’re not looking to start any fights, after all…

In case you hadn’t heard, this week marks the start of major league baseball season, in which all the promise of spring training begins to be fulfilled in earnest- or, in the case of some of us, gets flushed down the crapper. With the possible exception of boxing, no sport has been given the cinematic treatment more often or with the same degree of success as baseball. From little league to the big leagues, baseball movies are perennial favorites of moviegoers across the country. A little while back, Baseball America magazine conducted a poll of the greatest baseball movies of all time, and with this week’s poll we’ll be asking you which of their top five is your favorite.

Which of Baseball America's top 5 is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

As always the comments section is open for you to stump for your favorites or suggest other related topics of conversation. For example- is it just me, or is the American League much better-represented by Hollywood movies than the National? Discuss.

DVD Digest for April 7, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a recent Oscar winner finally gets the DVD treatment it deserves, and Warner digs deep into their vaults for a slew of new Blu-Ray titles.

This week’s selection of recent movies is headed by a handful of high-profile December releases, including Jim Carrey in Yes Man (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the Adam Sandler family vehicle Bedtime Stories (Disney, also Blu-Ray), Keanu Reeves in the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the animated The Tale of Despereaux (Universal, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson in Not Easily Broken (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and the controversial British horror movie Donkey Punch (Magnolia).

Last year, many DVD fans expressed displeasure over the shabby treatment given to the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, released in a bare-bones edition to capitalize on the movie’s recent Oscar success. This week, Disney hopes to remedy this with the release of a new “Collector’s Edition” in both standard DVD and Blu-Ray. This new upgrade boasts more than five hours of new features, including documentaries, and interviews with the filmmakers, cast and crew. Also this week: a 75th Anniversary Edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (Universal); Warner’s Pre-Code Hollywood Collection, which includes The Cheat, Merrily We Go to Hell, Hot Saturday, Torch Singer, Murder at the Vanities, and Search for Beauty; the TCM Spotlight: Doris Day Collection (Warner)- includes April in Paris, It’s a Great Feeling, Starlift, Tea for Two, and The Tunnel of Love; and the controversial-in-its-day La Grande Bouffe (E1 Entertainment).

The big Blu-Ray news this week is Warner’s release of nine (mostly dodgy, I must say) new titles in the format. The Warner Blu-Ray releases are: Peter Hyams’ 2010, Steven Seagal in Above the Law, Edward Norton in American History X, The Governator in Collateral Damage; the Rube Goldberg-esque thriller Final Destination; Denzel Washington standing up to the American health care system in John Q, an extended cut of Angelina Jolie in Taking Lives, and the 80s-set Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore rom-com The Wedding Singer. Also this week, a double feature of avian-themed Sony releases: Fly Away Home and Winged Migration.

Finally, the selection was pretty thin for plot synopses, so I wasn’t able to find a suitable Synopsis of the Week. The best I can do is a pretty unbeatable title: Britney Spears: The Return of An Angel. Doesn’t that sound like just about the cheesiest thing ever? Too bad the White Elephant Blogathon is over, because that could’ve made for a fun submission. Oh well- there’s always next year…

Night of the Living Dead Comedians: The Farrelly Brothers' "Three Stooges" and Its Predecessors

Phil Nugent — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:45:00 GMT

The news that the Farrelly Brothers are going ahead with their proposed Three Stooges movie, with a dream cast that includes Sean Penn, (probably) Jim Carrey, and (keep your fingers crossed) Benecio del Toro), is the latest sign that even the people who make movies think they don't make them like they used to. Especially since the official invention of "pop culture" at some point around 1967, moviemakers have found it harder and harder to leave well enough alone and resist the temptation to bring back their old favorites. This is the dark, deranged side of the comebacks that directors like Quentin Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky have deliberately engineered for actors they like, such as John Travolta, Pam Grier, and Mickey Rourke, who have slipped from the A-list or, as in the case of Grier, never really had the chance at a role worthy of them when they were cult favorites. It may also be the next stage of decadence after movies like Peter Bogdanovich's 1975 At Long Last Love, a nostalgic attempt to create a 1930s musical comedy with Cole Porter score, as if it had just been found in a time capsule where it had lain slumbering for forty years, even though it inexplicably starred Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepard. In 1995, Robert Zemeckis, a director who never met a technological gimmick he didn't like, used what then seemed like exciting new computer wizardry to make an episode of the HBO TV series Tales from the Crypt "starring" Humphrey Bogart; Bogart had to play a corpse, though, because the computers that snipped clips of him our of his old movies and inserted him into Zemeckis's new footage couldn't get his frozen face to move. Voiceover narration was supplied by Robert Saachi, an actor whose whole career is based on his physical and vocal resemblance to Bogart: he starred in a 1980 period detective movie called The Man with Bogart's Face, whose plot and supporting cast of characters were derived from assorted Bogart classics. More recently, the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a period fantasy that wore its computer-generated artificiality on its sleeve, used some old footage to have Laurence Olivier "play" its villain, though once again the dead star was unable to interact with the rest of the cast while unknowingly and involuntarily having one more bad movie added his IMDB page.

Of all dead stars, it makes sense that comedians would lead the league when it comes to inspiring people to want to bring them back. Many a kid has taken the first baby steps towards full-blown geekdom by working up imitations of some performer who's made him or her laugh. And laughter can make you feel so close to a performer that it's only natural to want more from them than we can ever get, especially in the case of those who were in an advanced state of rigor before some of their current fans were even born. In his comic book series Cerebus, which ran for 300 issues from 1977 to 2004, the writer-cartoonist Dave Sim paid affectionate, parodic tribute to a vast array of pop culture figures, ranging from Rodney Dangerfield and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to Oscar Wilde and assorted Looney Tunes characters, by basing supporting players on their physical appearances and capturing their speech patterns, mating the perfect pitch of a perfect mimic to a true satirist's gift for being funny in character. The first real sign that Sim might be possessed of genius came when he introduced "Lord Julius", a major Cerebus character based on Groucho Marx, and proceeded to demonstrate that writing convincingly Grouchoesque dialogue was well within his range. Much later, the roped the Three Stooges into Cerebus, too. But Sim--like Paul Gulacy, another comics artist, who attracted some notoriety in the '70s and '80s for his habit of drawing movie performers (including Bogart and Woody Allen) into his strips--Sim didn't have to worry about whether his collaborators could hold up their end, or about making his resurrected stars believable in the flesh. Others who have tried to pull off what the Farrellys are shooting for have been...not so lucky.

BRAIN DONORS (1992)

Jerry (Rat Race) Zucker and his brother David (An American Carol) Zucker were the big wheels behind this movie, back around the time when they were still regarded, as well, the way the Farrellys are apparently regarded in the industry today. The idea was to revive Marx Brothers-style comedy using the script for A Night at the Opera as a base. Among other things, this resulted in a script credited as having been written by Pat Proft, the scribe of Police Academy and Bachelor Party, and suggested by George S, Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. (One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong...) The film stars John Turturro in the Groucho role, called Roland T. Flakfizer, because although Proft, in his rsearch, failed to grasp anything about how the Marx Brothers' comedy worked or how their characters were shaped, he did pick up on the funny name motif. The English comedian Mel Smith is supposed to be Chico, and someone named Bob Nelson, who was either encouraged to mug his ass off or suffered from a galvanic facial tic, is a surprisingly talkative Harpo figure. (There's also Nancy Marchand, who was unable to seem out of it convincingly enough to remind anyone of Margaret Dumont.) Directed by Dennis Dugan, a man who has reason to be very grateful for the career of Adam Sandler, Brain Donors shows little interest in aiming for the level of surreal verbal with that made Groucho and Chico living legends; instead, it concentrates on sloppy, mistimed slapstick, making it one of the few films that make you think, "Leslie Nielson did this a lot better--in Wrongfully Accused!" Because Proft read somewhere that the Marx Brothers were anarchic and subversive, whenever Turturro and company execute some sloppy, mistimed slapstick, some guy who looks as if he's played a lot of bankers in his time stands up, gets red in the face, and says something like, "I'm gonna get those guys, Ngggghhhh-ghhh!" Maybe Proft and Dugan were confused and thought that the Marx Brothers were three of the Little Rascals.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF LAUREL AND HARDY: FOR LOVE OR MUMMY (1999)

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have always been one of the most fervently beloved slapstick comedy teams among real afficionados of comedy, though their profile among the public at large has shrunk a bit in recent years, maybe because their style and presence were so graceful and elegant that their work strikes modern audiences as slow and lacking in the energy that comes from real comic aggression. For the people who made this attempt to revive "Laurel and Hardy" as a trademark-- treating the performers as characters who could be incarnated by new actors, Gailard Sartain and Bronson Pinchot---that translates into family-fun innocuousness. What's missing, aside from the falling-domino intricacy of the real Laurel and Hardy's complicated routines and the ease with which they had learned to execute them after years of practice, is the real affection viewers come feel the two shared for each other: Sartain and Pinchot are just two talented guys who couldn't get a better gig and, between them, seem to have at least three eyes on the clock. As for what F. Murray Abraham is doing here, I'm not even sure I want to know. (I remember a time, back around his Oscar win for Amadeus, when you used to hear people snicker that Abraham was pompous and took himself too seriously. Maybe we should all go over to his house and apologize for that before he starts begging his agent to get him a job as a contestant on the next series of I Love New York.

STOOGEMANIA (1986)

This meager-budgeted comedy, starring the gifted Josh Mostel (who had one of his first high-profile roles standing in for John Belushi in Delta House, the "official" TV sitcom-rip-off of National Lampoon's Animal House), isn't actually an attempt to revive the Stooges but a "tribute" to them that doubles as the screen's major repository of Stooges imitations. Mostel plays a schlub named Howard F. Howard who seeks medical help for the Stooges fixation that is threatening to upend his life. Half-assed as the whole thing is, the movie has a few conceits--such as its visit to Los Angeles's dreaded "Stooge Row", populated with Stooge-imitating Stooges freaks who are on their last legs after having worn out their welcome in polite society--that might have been amusing if the thing weren't so underfunded and Mostel had had a little help to get it off the ground. It all plays out like a padded promotional video for Jump 'N The Saddle Band's 1983 novelty hit, "The Curly Shuffle."

The Stooges--comprised, in their glory years, of Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Moe's brother, the protean Curly--knew something themselves about the joys and sorrows of repackaging. They had started out in vaudeville supporting the tall, abrasive comedian Ted Healy, who in both his dress and demeanor suggested Bill O'Reilly playing Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Originally, the third Stooge was Moe and Curly's brother Shemp Howard, but Shemp found getting yelled at and batted about the face by Ted Healy--a practice that Healy reportedly expected his employees to put up with whether they were on stage or off--such a joyless experience that he departed before the Stooges went to Hollywood. (Shemp and Moe both made their movie debuts in the 1919 Spring Fever, a short film in which they supported the baseball legend Honus Wagner.) The Stooges made Soup to Nuts, their first movie as a unit, complete with Healy and Curly, in 1930, four years before splitting off on their own.

The Stooges' golden era, the time they were making shorts for Columbia with Curly on board, lasted a little less than a dozen years. In 1945, Curly began slowing down, showing signs of the effects of his drinking and Christ knows how many hits to the head, and in 1946 he retired from the team after suffering a debilitating stroke. He was replaced by Shemp, who after his death in 1955 was in turn replaced by Joe Besser, who destablized the universe by brazenly violating the accepted terms of Stooge Law: Besser, when hit by Moe, insisted on hitting back. Columbia let their contract lapse in 1957, and that should have been the end of it. But when the Stooges were rediscovered by a new generation that saw their classic shorts on TV, they were given the opportunity to cash in, and the boys, who had never received princely wages in all their time at Columbia, needed the money. Now augmented by Joe DeRita--christened "Curly Joe" for Stooge purposes--instead of the retaliatory Besser, Moe and Larry would appear in a string of feature films, such as Have Rocket, Will Travel, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules and The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. Compared to the shorts that made the Stooges beloved, they serve as cautionary examples for the Farrellys and their new Stooges, because they established certain new rules about just how long you can stand to watch people doing this stuff to each other. Not to mention just how long it's healthy for people to, you know, do this stuff to each other.

Clippy Strikes Back: The Scariest Technology In Cinema History! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

This week, youngsters (and the young at heart) will be treated to the sight of a giant space robot tearing up San Francisco (in 3-D!) in Monsters vs. Aliens (click here for review).

But last week, something really scary happened: my computer completely shut down thanks to some nasty virus, leaving me completely laptop-less for three long, frightening days (right in the middle of SXSW!), during which time I realized I no longer have the ability to think straight, remember things, communicate or even feed and dress myself without my little cybernetic soul mate in good working order.

Fortunately, the fine people at PC Guru in Austin, TX got me up and running...but it was definitely a scary reminder of how much it’s gonna suck when Facebook finally becomes self-aware and turns all our computers, ATMs, DVRs, MP3s and GPS systems against us.

So, as a public service, your (mostly) human friends here at the Screengrab figured now would be as good a time as any to whip up some post-Y2K panic with our list of THE SCARIEST TECHNOLOGY IN CINEMA HISTORY!

METROPOLIS (1927)

Fritz Lang's titanic silent sci-fi masterpiece uses a look derived from a mix of Art Deco and Amazing Stories cover designs to decorate a political allegory that Lang said was inspired by his first sight of New York City, which seems to have fried some of the wiring in his central cortex. (If the old boy were to come back and see what the place looks like today, we'd have to find him a job biting the heads off chickens.) Society consists of the rich who live above ground in glittering skyscrapers and the poor who labor and live in underground tunnels, sort of like in Titanic. The whole shebang is run by Johan, a capitalist uber-lord; meanwhile, down below, Metropolis has found its answer to Samuel Gompers in the beautiful Maria, a saintly labor activist who is rallying the workers. The plot kicks into high gear when Johan's breathtakingly goofy son, Freder, gets a look at Maria and is instantly radicalized. Instead of taking the usual tack of industrialist tyrants in this situation and buying his kid a motorcycle and a lap dance, Johan turns to his trusty house mad scientist, Rotwang, who creates a trouble-making robot duplicate of Maria, in a scene that anticipates The Bride of Frankenstein and Dr. Strangelove in about equal measure, and turns 'er loose, with results that prove instructional for one and all. (PN)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

Its red eye glowing, its voice calm and soothing, HAL 9000 – on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery – remains, forty-one years after 2001: A Space Odyssey’s debut, cinema’s most iconic piece of evil technology. Or, at least, the sentient HAL is one of the most dangerous pieces of technology to ever be presented on screen, as its homicidal tendencies stem primarily from a desire to fulfill preprogrammed mission directives – aims which are threatened by the plan of astronauts Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Poole (Gary Lockwood) to disconnect it. The fact that self-preservation in service of duty is HAL’s motivation to kill problematizes any attempt to cast it as purely evil, especially since its survival instinct, when viewed alongside its emotive speech (contrasted with the men’s monotonous, monosyllabic utterances), marks the computer as distinctly human-like. Nonetheless, even if HAL isn’t immoral, it most certainly is frighteningly lethal. And rarely have the movies presented a more harrowing, intimidating vision of technology-run-amok than the sight of HAL covertly, calculatingly reading the lips of the scheming astronauts, and soon thereafter sending Poole spinning into the oblivion of space. (NS)

WESTWORLD (1973)

While re-watching Westworld in preparation for this list, I recovered a long-lost childhood memory. I’m on a train with my family when bandits on horseback pull us over, board the train and take our money. This really happened, although I should probably explain that it was supposed to happen – it was no ordinary train ride, but rather a reenactment of the Great Train Robbery. I remember being terrified as the bandits prowled the aisle, brandishing their pistols, bandannas concealing most of their faces – but not so terrified that I actually relinquished the dollar my mother had slipped me so that I could enjoy being robbed along with everyone else. Why am I telling you this? Because, like Westworld, this was a simulation of life in the Old West intended to give us all the thrills without any of the consequences. As far as I know, there were no actual robots involved, but how can I be sure? The other thing it has in common with Westworld is that it scared me as a kid. Now that I’ve seen Westworld as an adult, I realize it’s about as scary as a visit to Six Gun City. The movie serves up some of writer/director Michael Crichton’s patented technophobia with a formula that would be duplicated to better effect in Jurassic Park, as visitors to a high-tech theme park find themselves terrorized by the robots meant to amuse them. It does have one thing going for it: Yul Brynner’s iconic black-hatted Gunslinger, who did the unstoppable killer robot thing more than a decade before The Terminator. (SVD)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

In screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's world, human beings don't really need technology to screw up their lives, but in this movie they get some help anyway, courtesy of Lacuna, Inc. and its mind-wipe service, which enables the client to have his memory scrubbed of anything that he feels is holding him back or causing him undue pain. Jim Carrey, at his most subdued, is the loser hero who discovers that Clementine (Kate Winslet), the old flame who shook up his life, has had her memories of their time together erased, possibly as a lark, and who opts to have his own mind scrubbed clean of its memories of her, not realizing how hard he'll fight to hang onto any traces of having had her in his life when the process begins. Kaufman and director Michel Gondry manage to wring romantic comedy out of what may be the most painful of romantic truths: everyone wants to be remembered, but the memories of what was most important to you may be the ones that you'd sometimes most like to be rid of. (PN)

Click Here For Part Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Unwatchable #40: “Son of the Mask”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

(Last week, with the help of a reader’s thoughtful intervention, I decided it would be a good idea to take a little breather from the Unwatchable project. In retrospect, I was hitting the IMDb Bottom 100 a little too hard for a few weeks there, and it’s clear I was feeling a bit burned out. Fortunately for you and (especially) for me, however, number 40 on the list is a movie I’ve already seen. Not only that, I already reviewed it when it came out. Since that review is no longer available online, I present it to you here with minor alterations.)

If he keeps working hard and honing his craft, Jamie Kennedy may one day achieve his goal of becoming a second-rate Jim Carrey. On the evidence of Son of the Mask, that day has not yet arrived. Having learned no lessons from its dismal flop Dumb and Dumberer, the last sequel to a Carrey comedy to go forth without its original star, New Line Cinema has churned out another belated follow-up.

The 1994 movie that introduced the Mask and helped launch Carrey to stardom was based on a Dark Horse comic book series influenced by legendary Looney Toons animator Tex Avery. Computer generated effects were in their infancy at the time, so the live-action cartoon approach of The Mask had some novelty value. Ten years later, the CGI thrill is long gone, but apparently director Lawrence Guterma (Cats and Dogs) didn’t get the memo.

At least Kennedy isn’t playing the same character as Carrey; in a nod to The Mask’s origins, he’s a wannabe animator named Tim Avery. While his wife Tonya (Traylor Howard) is eager to get their family started, the reluctant Tim still harbors hopes of launching his own show at the cartoon studio where he serves as in-house mascot. Meanwhile, the Norse god of mischief Loki (Alan Cumming) has raised the ire his dad Odin (Bob Hoskins) by losing the titular mask. Thanks to the Avery family pooch, the mask falls into Tim’s hands just in time for the company Halloween party. When he puts it on his face, he morphs into a green-faced whirling dervish with unearthly transformative powers, but lacks the manic, leering menace Carrey brought to the table. He’s like the children’s party version of The Mask. Tim apparently wears the mask to bed that night, and nine months later a son is born. Having inherited the mask’s powers, little Alvey sets about making life a living hell for daddy. Father and son bond, however, when Loki arrives on the scene, determined to reclaim the mask.

Guterman and screenwriter Lance Kazhei have concocted some busy Rube Goldberg sequences in hopes of recapturing the anarchic spirit of Avery’s Looney Toons, but their execution is hit-and-miss. Too often the results are more frantic and noisy than inspired. Cumming has his moments, but like everyone else in the movie, he’s overwhelmed by the digital clutter. None of the technological advancements of the past decade can make the tired slapstick and gross-out gags any funnier.

(I originally gave Son of the Mask a grade of C-, which was the system I was using at the time this review was published. I’m certainly not going to revisit the movie now, so let’s say that translates as three Maurys.)

Previously on Unwatchable:
41. Troll 2
42. Zombie Nightmare
43. American Ninja V
44. Leonard Part 6
45. Another 9½ Weeks

Unwatchable #51: “Simon Sez”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

A few years ago I was on a bus from Paris to Frankfurt, following a whirlwind 36-hour tour of the City of Lights. Gazing out the window at the French countryside should have been entertainment enough for our tour group, but no: we had an in-ride movie. It was an action movie called Double Team, and it starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman and Mickey Rourke. Appropriate, no? Van Damme is almost French after all, and they still loved Rourke in France for many years before his recent comeback.

Anyway, I don’t remember much about Double Team, but Wikipedia reminds me that Dennis Rodman played “a flamboyant arms dealer.” One thing I don’t recall thinking is that Rodman would have a long and successful film career. In fact, I very specifically remember not thinking that, and I think history has proved me right. The ex-basketball star’s sleepy-eyed brand of charisma may be an asset to the likes of Celebrity Apprentice, but his acting chops only served to make Van Damme look Brandoesque by comparison.

Nonetheless, Rodman did get a second chance at becoming the next Van Damme with Simon Sez, which I would charitably describe as an action comedy. Rodman plays the titular Simon, an ex-CIA operative now working for Interpol in France. (Apparently the European agency has a more lax dress code, allowing their agents to sport platinum blonde hair and multiple facial piercings and tattoos. I would think such an appearance might be a drawback on undercover missions, but I never went to spy school.) For reasons that eluded me, Simon is assisted by two monks, a wisecracking fat guy and a wisecracking black dude; they’re like the worst Abbot and Costello tribute show on earth.

That makes them a good match for the sorriest Jim Carrey substitute a SAG minimum salary could buy in 1999, Dane Cook. As Nick Miranda, Simon’s old classmate from Langley, Cook has clearly been given free reign to unleash his comic genius at will. He makes Wookie noises and Jurassic Park noises! He snaps off the one-liners in the midst of a high-speed car chase. (“These guys are like my college loan officers – they just keep comin’!” “Maybe he just wants some Grey Poupon!”) There is a satisfying moment when he falls off a fire escape into a garbage can and rolls down an alley, but it’s not enough to make up for his gruesome mistaken faith in his own talent and likeability.

Anyway, the plot has something to do with Rodman and Cook teaming up to rescue a rich man’s kidnapped daughter who is being held ransom for the disk full of CIA secrets Brad Pitt thought he’d found in Burn After Reading. Rodman’s vortex of bad acting takes over the rest of the cast, none of whom can make the typed-by-chimpanzee dialogue sound like words actual humans would say. The action sequences offer an array of gaffes and utter disregard for the laws of physics (I think I saw Rodman stopping for a sandwich as he fell from a 30-story window), but there is a quicksand sequence, which always cheers me up. (Unfortunately, Rodman rescues Cook before he completely disappears beneath the surface.)

The good news is that Simon Sez was rewarded with one of the worst opening weekends in history, debuting on 504 screens and taking in a miserable $185,472 total. The movie got what it deserved, and I don’t need to pile on any further. I will mention something you may have noticed: this is Unwatchable #51, which means we’ve made it halfway through the list and have 50 more to go. They bet against me! They said I’d never make it past #78! But I proved ‘em wrong! Tune in next week for a special first-half celebration of…Unwatchable!

Previously on Unwatchable:
52. In the Mix
53. Baby Geniuses
54. Meatballs 4
55. A*P*E
56. Araf

Sundance Roundup: Day Four

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Sundance remains a buyer's market so far, but if you're a filmmaker having little success attracting interest from distributors, don't panic yet. "IFC will probably turn out to be one of the most aggressive buyers at the Sundance Film Festival here when it comes to the number of films bought, if not the prices paid," the New York Times reports. "Jonathan Sehring, IFC’s president, and his crew were already here last Thursday to begin stocking up on pictures for their In Theaters and Festival Direct services, which send first-run movies to more than 50 million viewers in all, through their video-on-demand services." By the way, IFC will be making Steven Soderbergh's Che available on demand starting Wednesday.

The gay romance/con movie I Love You Phillip Morris has yet to find a buyer, but it seems only a matter of time. Blogging for the Houston Press, Steve McVicker, author of the book upon which the movie is based, proclaims himself satisfied with the result. "Directors/screenwriter Glen Fecarra and John Requa, were both true to my book, but also put their creative stamp on it. They kept most aspects of the book, but condensed and compressed the material in a true dark screwball comedy, which is also a poignant love story between the two jailhouse lovers, Morris and Steve Russell, who also blossomed as an escape artist...No offense to John or Glenn, but at time it felt like I was watching a Coen Brothers' comedy." Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly sort of agrees, saying the movie is "like one of those out-of-the-frying-pan capers by the Coen brothers crossed with Catch Me If You Can, featuring a hero as blithely comfortable with the metaphysics of identity fraud as Tom Ripley."

CNET has the scoop on enjoying Sundance from the comfort of your own couch, as 10 shorts from the festival are available for viewing online. "The shorts made available on iTunes, with distribution and encoding services by Shorts International, were chosen "as a sampling of the festival's unique shorts filmmakers' voices," says programmer Todd Luoto. "Some are funny; some are sad. Some are serious. Some are just plain crazy and need no classification, and some couldn't be classified if we tried--just the way we like it."

DVD Digest for December 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This week, the big studios drop a ton of new DVDs and Blu-Rays into the market to compete for your newly-acquired Christmas cash.

In recent releases, DVD shopping begins early this week, with three new Paramount titles: Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye (also Blu-Ray); Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town (also Blu-Ray); and Keira Knightley in The Duchess (also Blu-Ray). Today brings us Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha (Image Entertainment), as well as a “head to head” match up (sorry) between Alan Ball’s Towelhead (Warner) and the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead (Sony).

In TV on DVD, today’s new releases include The Tudors Season 2 (Paramount) and Nip/Tuck Season 5 Part 1 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s bumper crop of new Blu-Ray-only releases includes: Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Paramount); the Shining-in-space thriller Event Horizon (Paramount); Demi Moore and the Swayz in Ghost (Paramount); Queen Latifah in Last Holiday (Paramount); Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount); Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (Warner); and finally, the Browncoats’ favorite, Joss Whedon’s Serenity (Universal).

Video of the Day: Zooey Deschanel Is Not Your Late Night Booty Call

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Yes Man is the new Jim Carrey movie that’s a lot like old Jim Carrey movies like Liar Liar and not so much like newer Jim Carrey movies like The Number 23. You can do your own math here, but this is probably more of a good thing than a bad thing, particularly since this Jim Carrey movie has something no other Jim Carrey movie has: Zooey Deschanel. I’ve made my feelings clear on this subject, but just for the record I am in favor of this development. Since I had to see Yes Man anyway, I’m glad there were scenes with Ms. Deschanel singing humorous synth-pop songs to balance the scenes in which Mr. Carrey scotch-tapes his face into strange expressions.

Deschanel plays Carrey’s love interest Allison, whose hobbies include taking photos while jogging and singing to small audiences with her band Munchausen by Proxy. Here, for your listening and viewing enjoyment, is the full-length video for “Sweet Ballad.” Whore no more!

Morning Deal Report: Jim Carrey Believes – Or Not

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Sequels ruled the weekend box office, with High School Musical 3: Senior Year opening to a “Holy shit, America, first the Chihuahua and now this?” $42 million. And moviegoers still can’t get enough of that lovable mass murderer Jigsaw, as Saw V took in $30.5 million, good for second place. Pride and Glory performed about as well as you’d expect from a movie that’s been sitting on the shelf since there were only three Saw movies, mopping up $6.3 million. And it should come as no surprise that W. dropped precipitously in the polls, with a weekend take of $5.3 million.

Believe it or not, Jim Carrey is set to play Robert Ripley for director Chris Columbus. The Ripley’s Believe It or Not project has been floundering in development hell for a while (Tim Burton was formerly attached), but Paramount has given Columbus the go-ahead. “Once Columbus’ deal is closed, the studio will hire a writer to draft the project, which remains a Par priority: The studio is aiming for a 2011 release and is hoping the pic spawns a franchise,” Variety obviouslies.

Speaking of Burton, the inevitable has happened: Crispin Glover has joined the cast of Alice in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter role is already taken, so Glover will appear as the Knave of Hearts, who is “put on trial for stealing the Queen of Hearts' tarts and is defended by Alice,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Crispin Glover Requires Cash, Sushi
Anne Hathaway in Wonderland

Coming Soon: A Screengrab Salute To Movie Trailers (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The fake trailers from TROPIC THUNDER (2008), GRINDHOUSE (2007) & KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977)

Of course, no tribute to the art of coming attraction trailers would be complete without a nod to the art of FAKE coming attraction trailers. Tropic Thunder recently delighted many and outraged some with its fake preview for Simple Jack, a dead-on parody of the odious, manipulative genre of faux-inspirational retar...I mean, “mentally challenged”-sploitation potboilers like I Am Sam. And last year, the interstitial glimpses of fictional schlock classics like Machete, Thanksgiving, Werewolf Women of the SS and Don’t (by Robert Rodriguez and cameo directors Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright, respectively) were the best reasons to sit through the entire 191-minute cut of Grindhouse in one sitting. But perhaps the granddaddy (or granddaughter?) of all fake trailers is the "teaser" for Catholic High School Girls In Trouble, one of the definite hits in John Landis’ hit-or-miss cult classic, Kentucky Fried Movie (but, uh, you might not wanna watch this one at work).

The trailer for BUFFALO ’66 (1998)

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to agree that Vincent Gallo doesn’t make ordinary movies. Gallo’s taste for the strange extended to his trailer for his first directorial effort, Buffalo ’66. Cut by Gallo himself, the trailer is a montage of still images from the film, set to the opening passages of Yes’ “Heart of the Sunrise.” As a montage it’s pretty irresistible, with the percussive cutting matching the rhythm of the song, down to the way Gallo animates the stills of Anjelica Huston gesticulating at the dinner table. But what makes this trailer even cooler is that it’s one of the few that show more or less everything in the movie without giving it away. We see the characters, the style, the grey and dingy setting, but we’re wondering how it all fits together. And thanks to how well Gallo sells it, we can’t wait to find out.

The trailer for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

The Python boys never met a phenomenon they couldn’t satirize, so it was only natural that with the trailer for their first feature, they’d hold the art of movie advertising up to scorn. This epic three-minute spot begins with a panoramic shot that’s meant to underline the majesty of the film that’s ostensibly being advertised, accompanied by properly stentorian narration. Naturally, the boys soon pull the rug out from under this seriousness, revealing it to be merely auditions for a voiceover artist. Eventually, we end up with narration in subtitled Chinese (this at a time when studios were avoiding non-English dialogue in trailers), after which the trailer goes to work on the self-important rhetoric of studio marketing. The narrator calls the movie “run-of-the-mill” and says, “compared to something like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, it’s all rather silly.” In addition, the editing of the trailer is reminiscent of the work of fly-by-night distributors who more or less assembled highlights from the film with little regard for coherence. But here, that’s all part of the magic, although it may be difficult to notice while you’re laughing at the trailer’s version of a rave review or the abrupt segue to an advertisement for a nearby Chinese restaurant. So few classic movies have the trailers they deserve, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail definitely does.

The trailer for COMEDIAN (2002)

When it was announced that Don “The Voice” LaFontaine had passed away, many movie lovers flashed back to this trailer, only to discover that its featured talent wasn’t LaFontaine at all, but fellow voiceover titan Hal Douglas. No matter: we’d like to think that LaFontaine would have approved of this “anti-trailer”, still the most succinct and priceless distillation of the deathless voiceover clichés that he spouted so many times over the years. But while on the surface this teaser has nothing but contempt for the inane catchphrases that get recycled by the studios, there’s also a real affection for the men whose job it is to give them authority. By giving a face to the usually faceless voiceover artist, we gain respect for him, and for the way he forges on even when he realizes that the things he’s made to say are completely absurd. As much as lines like “in a world…” have become a joke to trailer watchers, they’re also a kind of comfort, and when Douglas responds to his being fired with, “No, I like it in here,” we can’t help but think that, yes, we like you in there too.

The trailer for SLEEPER (1973)

This trailer for Woody Allen's futuristic "love story about two people who hate each other" parodies the convention by which the great filmmaker is caught by the camera crew and an unseen interviewer while busily working on his next masterpiece. The trailer itself benefits from clips drawn from one of Allen's few films to include both vivid cartoon imagery and an elegant production design. And the scenes in which Allen promises a movie "with very little overt comedy" and scenes "of a cerebral, almost didactic nature" look even funnier now, considering that they could pass as an accurate description of any of a dozen stink bombs he's made since this slapstick classic came out.

The trailer for ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

Instead of emphasizing popular stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, early promotions for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind featured supporting player Tom Wilkinson – if you knew to look for him. This teaser trailer mimicks the low-budget aesthetic of commercials for the local dentist’s office, but the service they’re offering – a selective memory erasure – is purely the stuff of Charlie Kaufman’s imagination. The poker-faced buzz campaign for Eternal Sunshine was entirely based around Lacuna, Inc., including a website with coupons.

The trailer for LITTLE CHILDREN (2006)

You can keep your big explosions and breathtaking panoramas. This trailer for Todd Field’s Little Children holds everything in, and the mounting tension – symbolized by a child’s toy train chugging through a dozen ordinary suburban moments – is almost unbearable.

The trailer for THE SHINING (1980)

Often the most memorable and effective trailers aren't those that sweat to cram in the movie's every high point and plot point but those that boil a picture down to an especially striking image and sell it in a way that sutures it to the viewer's imagination. Stanley Kubrick provided an especially choice example with this early and mysterious look at his 1980 horror movie. It consists of a single shot that turned up late in the film, tricked up here with electronic music and mechanical-sounding voices chanting "Redrum." (Did Kubrick bring in HAL 9000 to work on the soundtrack?) It appeared several months before the movie itself was released, and played briefly before being pulled in favor of a more conventional and far less disturbing trailer.

Click Here for Part One!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Gwynne Watkins

Trailer Review: Yes Man

Paul Clark — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For all you fans of broad-as-a-barn-door Jim Carrey, this is your lucky day. As with his previous smashes Liar, Liar and Bruce Almighty, The Yes Man stars Carrey as a man whose life gets turned around by high-concept intervention, this time in the form of a self-help guru who convinces him to go an entire year without saying “no.” With life-affirming laughter sure to ensue, this fits to clearly into the feel-good Carrey template that it’s hard to believe it was based on a memoir rather than being churned out by an established screenwriter with Carrey in mind. That said, it could turn out to be a cut above his other films in this vein, if the presence of director Peyton Reed is any indication- though he also directed The Break-Up, so you never know. If nothing else, this should line Carrey’s coffers for a few years, which will hopefully allow him to make something more adventurous akin to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although truth be told, just as long as he doesn’t make another The Number 23, I’ll be satisfied.

Screengrab Review: “The Dark Knight”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stamping Out Goodness

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:45:00 GMT

Over the years, Terence Stamp has transformed from Angry Young Man of British Cinema to Living Symbol of Swinging Sixties London to Occasional Blockbuster Filler Material Paycheck-Casher to Grand Old Man of the Silver Screen. But one thing has remained constant: he's a hell of a fun interview.

The Collider managed to track him down at the premiere of the Get Smart big-screen adaptation, and, in discussing everything from working with Tom Cruise to working on Yes Man with Jim Carrey to his classic role as General Zod in Superman II, he's as engaging as ever. In discussing the problem-plagued Valkyrie, Cruise's WWII epic, Stamp plays it pretty close to the vest, just before launching into a rather odd story about being invited to a Tom Cruise rave.

Our favorite anecdote, though, is the one where Stamp more or less takes direct responsibility for the moral decline of Western civilization since 1980: "I hadn't worked in about 10 years when I got the Superman offer, and I was very nervous because it was apparent that they just wanted, like, an ugly. And I had the feeling that they were going to just like me ugly, and dress me ugly, and give me ugly stuff to say. And I had a friend at the time -- he was a baron, a Dutch baron, he was called Frederick von Pallandt and he was a very wise guy. He was a bit older than me. And I said, 'I'm having doubts about this.' And he said, 'You shouldn't really have doubts about it, because for loads of kids, Superman movies will be the first movie they ever go to see. And by the time they grow up, there'll be more people who want to be more people who want to be Zod than Superman. So you really shouldn't worry about it. You should just be as ugly and as horrible as you can be.' And it kind of came to pass, you know."

The Two Faces of Aaron Eckhart

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Those members of the moviegoing public who aren’t steeped in Batman lore may be wondering why Aaron Eckhart’s turn as seemingly upstanding but bland District Attorney Harvey Dent is getting so much play in the ever-expansive Dark Knight marketing campaign. That’s because one of the most indelible members of Batman’s rogues gallery has never gotten his due on the screen.

“On the campy 1960s Batman television series, the writers imported pretty much every major villain from the namesake comic book -- the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin and Catwoman, etc. -- but not Two-Face,” writes Geoff Boucher in the Los Angeles Times. “He was simply too gross.” Two-Face is the villain Harvey Dent becomes after half his face is scarred with acid. You may or may not have gleaned this from Joel Schumacher’s overstuffed Batman Forever, in which Tommy Lee Jones…I don’t want to say acts, exactly, but at least appears onscreen as Two-Face. If you blinked, you missed the brief clip explaining the character’s origins and were left to wonder who this cackling doofus playing second fiddle to Jim Carrey could possibly be.

In theory, The Dark Knight will rectify this slight, but so far the marketing team has shown rare restraint, keeping the character under wraps while letting the Joker run wild. There’s plenty of Dent in the trailers, but no Two-Face. “That's right, people don't really know yet," Eckert told the Times. “I can tell you that, basically, when you look at Two-Face, you should get sick to your stomach. Being the guy under all that, well, that was a lot of fun for me. It's like you would feel if you met someone whose face had pretty much been ripped off or burned off with acid. I can't talk about it beyond that because I don't want to give away too much of the plans by Chris.”

It’s probably too much to hope that the character will remain incognito until the movie opens, which is a shame. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all get sick to our stomachs together?

Let's Twist Again

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:30:00 GMT

At this most retrospective time of the year, let us look back at the thrillers of 2007 and the mind-bending twists that made them so thrilling. By “mind-bending,” of course, I mean ludicrous or predictable or – ever so rarely – actually clever enough to make the attached movie almost worth sitting through. Which twists missed, which got us pissed, and which made the list with The Mist?

It goes without saying that there are spoilers galore after the jump, so tread lightly…

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

The Plot: Student Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) is abducted by a Saw-like fiend who dismembers her and leaves her for dead. When she awakes in the hospital, she insists she is actually a stripper named Dakota Moss.

The Twist: Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss are twins, separated at birth!

Verdict: Lohan may have pulled off the twin routine in The Parent Trap, but in her current state it’s asking a bit much for her to pull off one character, let alone two.

THE REAPING

The Plot: Hilary Swank is a former missionary who has lost her faith and now travels the country debunking miracles. She has her hands full when a series of biblical plagues descends on a small Southern town and the townspeople blame a young girl they believe to be possessed by a demon.

The Twist: The young girl is not possessed by a demon. Swank has been impregnated by the local cult leader, and she is carrying the devil spawn.

Verdict: This twist manages to turn a perfectly awful Exorcist knockoff into a genuinely terrible Rosemary’s Baby rip-off in the blink of an eye. No small feat!

THE NUMBER 23

The Plot: Dog catcher Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) finds intriguing parallels to his own life in a strange book written by the mysterious Topsy Kretts. The book, The Number 23, concerns a detective who murders his lover.

The Twist: Sparrow wrote the book himself as a confession to the murder of his college girlfriend. Topsy Kretts = Top Secrets!

Verdict: It takes director Joel Schumacher nearly fifteen minutes to explain the twist, which should have been his first clue that it wasn’t a very good one.

PREMONITION

The Plot: The morning after her husband Jim is killed in a car accident, Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) wakes up to find he is still alive. The next day, Jim is dead again, and Linda realizes she is living the week of his death out of order.

The Twist: Linda figures this out in time to prevent the car crash that would have killed Jim. But he is killed almost immediately anyway when a fuel truck skids out of control and slams into him.

Verdict: No explanation is ever given for Linda’s scrambled chronology, and she doesn’t even seem all that curious about it – so why should we?

THE MIST

The Plot: The residents of a small Maine town are trapped in a supermarket when a mist full of fearsome critters rolls in. Bloodshed and insanity ensue before David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and a handful of survivors attempt their escape by car.

The Twist: The survivors run out of gas in the mist. Convinced there is no escaping a lingering, painful death via critter, Drayton mercy kills the others, including his own son. Minutes later, the mist clears as the military arrives to wipe out the critters.

Verdict: So mean, sadistic, and cruelly satisfying, even Stephen King didn’t come up with it – it was Frank Darabont’s idea, and who knew he had it in him?