The Screengrab : joss whedon

Morning Deal Report: Buffy Slays Again

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:30:00 GMT

More people spent time at the Smithsonian than received Salvation over the long Memorial Day weekend. Ben Stiller’s second Night in the Museum trumped the latest Terminator at the box office, taking in $70 million from Friday to Monday. Salvation, which actually opened Thursday night, took in $53.8 million for a total gross of $67.2 million. Star Trek, Angels and Demons and Dance Flick rounded out the top five.

This can’t possibly be a good idea. “A new incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer could be coming to the big screen,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Buffy creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.” This new version “would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike.” Surely there’s a lawsuit brewing back at Whedon headquarters.

Flight Of the Navigator is also set to take off again. “The 1986 original told the story of a 12-year-old boy who is abducted by an alien spacecraft in 1978 and reappears eight years later, still the same age and with no memory of what happened.”

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

SATURN 3 (1980)

To be honest, the scariest thing about Stanley Donen’s Cheez-Whiz science fiction chamber piece isn’t the giant “Demi-God” robot Hector (not even after the human-brained cyborg is reprogrammed with the horny, homicidal impulses of Harvey Keitel’s Abby-Normal cerebellum). Nor is it the terrible acting by Farrah Fawcett or the sight of Kirk Douglas’ naked rump in action. No, for me, the scariest thing about Saturn 3 is the inexplicable streak of Puritan fundamentalism it elicited when I saw it on the big screen many moons ago, prompting me to sit down and fire off an angry letter to Starlog magazine about all the unnecessary sexual content Donen had slipped into a genre (science fiction) that was usually a non-threatening, safely asexual haven for pubescent, maladjusted geeks like my then (barely) 13-year-old self. The fact that Keitel stared at the private parts of (scantily-clad) Fawcett’s dog, Sally, then later wrestled with a nude Douglas filled me with moral outrage (masking hormonal unease) that was later replaced by massive embarrassment when the aforementioned letter was actually published and, worse, discovered (and mercilessly mocked) by my friends. And now, thanks to the wonders of modern bloggage, I can share my Saturn 3 embarrassment with the whole wide world, all at the touch of a button...thanks a bunch, technology! (AO)

WARGAMES (1983)

In WarGames, Matthew Broderick is the first kid in America with the Internet, but unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to know how to use it to download porn. He does know how to hack into his high school’s system and change his grades, which is useful, but not as useful as changing his cute classmate Jennifer’s (Ally Sheedy) grades. He also tries to break new ground in the field of cyber-piracy by downloading a cool new game from the manufacturer before it’s even released, but instead inadvertently hacks into the NORAD supercomputer known as WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) and launches a potentially apocalyptic game of Global Thermonuclear War. From a modern standpoint, WarGames plays like a goofy shotgun marriage of John Hughes-ian ‘80s teen comedy and dated technothriller, but I’ll give the movie credit for anticipating the potential for cyber-terrorism long before any of us knew what that meant and also for tapping into Reagan-era anxiety about nuclear war, accidental and otherwise. It’s harder to forgive the simplistic, preachy “tic-tac-toe” ending (seen above), but maybe they can fix that in the inevitable remake. (SVD)

MINORITY REPORT (2002)

Steven Spielberg turned a Philip K. Dick story into an action vehicle for Tom Cruise, with results that actually trash the ideas in the original material less thoroughly than a lot of other moves based on Dick's work. The ideas can't said to be far from timely, either. Cruise is the head of the Washington, D.C. "Precrime" force, which uses psychics and a vast electronic surveillance network to pick out people who are contemplating committing crimes and arrest them before the crimes actually occur. Cruise, as twittishly self-satisfied as ever, sees nothing troubling about this way of doing things until he himself is identified as a potential evildoer, at which point he suddenly detects certain flaws in the system. A good movie up until the last fifteen minutes or so; not even Dick ever imagined a drug that could make the ending go down easily. (PN)

SERENITY (2005)

Most of Joss Whedon's space-cowboys fantasy (spun off from his criminally short-lived TV series Firefly) revels in futuristic technology, treating it as a blast, but it has a sting in its tail: the revelation of what terrible secret the government is sitting on. In one of his novels, William S. Burroughs once invented a drug called Bor Bor, which was "held in horror" by Burroughs' heroes and "only used as a weapon against our enemies"; its effect "is to lull the user into a state of fuzzy well-being and benevolence, a warm good feeling that everything will come out all right for America." The crew of Serenity discover the remains of a city that consists of functioning, automated buildings filled with dusty corpses; they are all that is left of a population that was fed on an experimental drug that was designed to produce a more tranquil, non-violent people less inclined to object to or protest anything, and who became so satisfied with the state of things that they stopped moving altogether and quietly starved to death. That's one version of Morning in America. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Joss Whedon in the Woods

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Joss Whedon is producing The Cabin the Woods, to be written and directed by Cloverfield screenwriter Drew Goddard, and two actors are aboard for the trip. “"It's really just your basic typecasting: When you need two actors to run through the woods in low-cut nighties, you immediately think of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford,” Goddard tells The Hollywood Reporter. Little is known about the story, except that it “provides a new twist on a classic scenario -- in this case the young-people-stranded-in-the-woods horror trope.” The new twist: the young people are OLD!

Michael Imperioli’s directorial debut opens the Rotterdam Film Festival today – and no, it’s not Cleaver. The Hungry Ghosts “recounts the crossed destinies of a group of isolated New Yorkers, all in search of happiness,” Variety reports. Imperioli’s Sopranos co-stars Steve Schirippa and Sharon Angela are in the cast and expected to be on hand in Rotterdam.

2012 has been delayed. The movie, not the year – we’re pretty sure 2012 will still immediately follow 2011 if all goes well. Sony is pushing back Roland Emmerich’s latest apocalypse from July 10 to November 13, “the same date the studio used to launch the previous two James Bond pics.”

Related:
1949 vs. 2012: John Woo/Roland Emmerich Deathmatch!
Video of the Day: Wonder Woman '67

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).

Summerfest '08: "I Know What You Did Last Summer"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Hey, remember Kevin WIlliamson? Sure you do! He was the highly paid screenwriter who was going to revolutionize the horror cinema for a new generation with his 'smart' thrillers, starting with Scream in 1996. Unfortunately, it turned out that by 'smart' he meant 'marginally rewarding for those who had spent as much time watching crappy horror movies as I did'. His moment quickly passed, and in the 2000s, torture porn and J-horror have become the new touchstones of Fangoria fans, while Williamson went on to a whole 'nother kind of showbiz glory as the creator of the slasher-deficient Dawson's Creek. Still, he meant well, and about ten years ago, his movies were about the only evidence that could be found that the genre had any life left in it at all. So why not give the guy a break and make one of his most famous films the subject of an entry in Summerfest '08, the weekly Screengrab feature where we review movies with the word 'summer' in the title to give you something to do for a couple of hours while you're waiting for the potato salad to cool? If nothing else, we can guarantee you that this week's installment is going to be a bit more fun than the gloomy 1950s psychodramas we've featured for the last couple of weeks.

So strap on your fisherman's slicker, polish up your favorite boat hook, and join us for a look at 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer!

THE ACTION: Julie, Helen, Barry and Ray are a quartet of remarkably photogenic North Carolina teenagers who happily correspond to some of our very favorite big-screen stereotypes (respectively, the good girl, the wannabe starlet, the party boy, and the jock). On the Fourth of July weekend just after their graduation, they're cruising around one nigher after a fun trip to the beach, and wouldn't you know it, their car just happens to plow into a shambolic wino whom they are forced to leave for dead. Hey, it's happened to all of us, right? Let those who have not accidentally run over a wino cast the first stone, that's all I'm saying. A year later, they find themselves wracked with guilt and unable to fulfill any of their teenage dreams, except the dreams that involve staying drunk all the time. That's when they get a mysterious missive reading "I know what you did last summer", and a number of their friends start to turn up dead, the victims of sharpened implements wielded by a dead ringer for the Gorton's fisherman. Which one of them has turned on his or her friends? Or is it some phantom stranger who has it in for them? And which horror movie cliches will Kevin Williamson take pokes at while pretending he's above them in his own screenplay? Only time will tell, or looking at any number of movie spoiler websites.

THE PLAYERS: In aid of his how-much-can-I-get-this-dialogue-to-sound-like-Joss-Whedon-wrote-it script, Williamson (and forgotten director Jim Gillespie) recruited four of the hottest young talents in Hollywood, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself: our quartet of menaced teens aren't some backlot collection of nobodies, but Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr. For the benefit of our younger readers, who are even now shrugging and saying "Who?", let us assure you that those four were the cream of the crop when it came to screamworthy teens ca. 1997. While none of them ended up as huge big-screen names, at the time, you'd have been hard pressed to find a more stellar group of young actors. So what if their careers didn't exactly pan out like they hoped they might? It's not as if, like their characters in the movie, their hopes and dreams for the future were dashed because of the massive guilt they felt at having performed an unspeakble act that left them...hey, wait a minute!

SUMMER FUN: There's all sorts of summer fun going on in this feel-good celebration of murder. We start out with a beach party -- probably the greatest kind of summer fun there is; we move on to some exciting teenage sex, which everybody loves even if you know the poor kids are gonna have to die for it; after that, there's a thrilling car wreck, which always gets your heart racing; and finally, there's a bloody killing spree, which is the way everyone wishes their July 4th weekend could end, even if it's a wish that only comes true for a selectr few people. The movie also features an appearance by a wan, unhinged Ann Heche as the sister of the hapless gent who gets run over early in the film, and you know whenever Ann Heche shows up, somebody's gonna be having a good time soon enough.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: Seeing as there are a lot of dudes in this movie, and dudes who, portrayed by latte-sipping left coast elitists as they are, are nonetheless supposed to be swaggering drunken teenagers from North Carolina, I am pleased to report that not only are there a few fleeting glimpses of Hawaiian shirts in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but there are even several incidences of the main male characters wearing shirts that, if they are not actually Hawaiian shirts, at least might as well be Hawaiian shirts. The point needs to be made in this film that several of its principles are good-time party guys, and if there is a better vector for delivery of this message than the Hawaiian shirt, I have yet to encounter it.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: Curiously enough for a movie that contains Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, their breasts, and a beach, there is not really as much bikini action as one would perhaps anticipate, let alone desire. That said, the makers of this film are not idiots, and while they do extract from us the concession that we make do with half-sweaters, denim pimp hats, and whatever else the movie's wardrobe designer was into at the moment for much of the movie, it's not as if we are entirely denied our bikini party time. Which, given the fact that arguably the most important character in the movie spends an inordinate amound of time in a rain slicker, is probably a good thing.

Morning Deal Report: Wolverines! “Red Dawn” Remake Rising

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

As always, a reminder that we don’t make this stuff up, except once a year on April Fool’s Day. And surely there must be some fools behind the idea of remaking the Commie-baiting camp classic Red Dawn, perhaps the most genetically pure ’80s movie in existence. Yet here it is in the Hollywood Reporter: “Red Dawn will be redone. Screenwriter Carl Ellsworth has been hired to recraft the ultimate homeland invasion story about a new generation of besieged high schoolers…‘The tone is going to be very intense, very much keeping in mind the post-9/11 world that we're in,’ says Ellsworth, who was 11 when the original was released.” But amusing/befuddling/horrifying as this may be to contemplate, the Reporter has buried the lead. Tucked into the third paragraph is an offhand mention that MGM is also developing “a big-budget rebuild of RoboCop, which director Darren Aronofsky among others has recently been in to discuss.” If Aronofsky is remaking an '80s movie, shouldn’t it be this one?

MGM has been busy, as Variety reports the studio has greenlit the Joss Whedon thriller The Cabin in the Woods. Whedon has co-written the script with Drew Goddard, “with Goddard signed to make his directorial debut and Whedon producing.” Not much more is known about the project, but our sources tell us it involves a cabin in the woods.

And in keeping with the “everything old is new again” theme, Hulk history is repeating itself. “After four weekends, the Louis Leterrier-directed The Incredible Hulk has earned $125 million, the same as what [Ang Lee’s] Hulk had pulled in at the same time in its run,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. “Hulk finished with $132 million, and its successor is unlikely to do much better." Fans looking forward to seeing Tim Blake Nelson as The Leader may be out of luck, as Marvel has yet to greenlight a sequel.

Related:
Aronofsky Takes Up Residence in Riverview Towers
Hulk Smash?

Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

After the big screen edition of Sex & The City exceeded the low expectations of industry gurus who were shocked...shocked...to discover that people were actually interested in a movie about, y'know, gurlz, Missy Schwartz wrote a depressingly familiar story for Entertainment Weekly: “It was an unqualified triumph...one the industry observed in a stunned, slack-jawed state. As the weekend rolled to a close, news outlets filed their reports with words like unexpected, surprising, and shocking. ‘What do you know?’ they all seemed to be saying. ‘Women go to the movies!’”

And if Sex and the City 2 (or The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 or Mama Mia!) or any other female-centric movie succeeds in the near future, Hollywood will be surprised all over again, and Entertainment Weekly and other publications will run similar articles about the American movie-going public’s "unexpected," "surprising" and "shocking" desire for strong female characters...a desire Hollywood will more or less continue to ignore as it continues its relentless pursuit of teenage boys, no matter how many Speed Racers crash and burn along the way.

Because, after all, many studio execs are just overgrown boys themselves. They dig gadgets, explosions and special effects, and CGI creations are easy to control and merchandise. Female-centered movies tend to rely on well-written screenplays, relatable characters, nuanced direction and...yecccch...feelings: all the things most studio execs pretend to champion but secretly hate.

But we here at The Screengrab aren’t afraid to get in touch with our feminine sides as we raise our Cosmos to these Top Ten “chick hits”: films that put their empowered female characters front and center (without resorting to stripper poles OR big gauzy Prince Charming/Bridezilla wedding porn).

THELMA AND LOUISE (1991)

Okay, so I’m not sure how empowering it is to drive off a cliff in real life, but this Ridley Scott film (based on an iconic script by wunderkind, zeitgeist-tapping Academy Award-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri) caused a sensation upon its release by (A) objectifying Brad Pitt as a hunky slab of beefcake (thus electrifying and pretty much launching his career) and (B) allowing Susan Sarandon’s Louise to gun down the scumbag who was raping Geena Davis’ Thelma (and later blow up the truck of a leering male chauvinist pig) without even feeling all that bad about it, just like any number of male actors in any number of male-centric revenge fantasies...except in films like Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, etc., the male heroes didn’t have to die in the end to satisfy Hays Code-style notions of karmic retribution for stepping outside the lines of acceptable social conduct. Still, the film’s outlaw motif energized female audiences by (melo)dramatizing the common stereotypical perception of men as either (a) dangerous assholes or (b) hapless boobs while providing enough action and sex to attract audiences of every gender.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006)

There’s a beloved feminist koan that goes something like this: ruthless, aggressive men who go after what they want are called winners, while ruthless, aggressive women are called bitches. Of course, most thinking people realize that ruthless, aggressive men are actually called assholes...and it’s the universal, gender-blind nature of the eternally confusing success vs. happiness equation faced by Anne Hathaway’s aspiring fashionista “Andy” Sachs that helped to make the film version of The Devil Wears Prada a $300 million dollar monster hit. And, let’s see...two seconds of Googling and...yep! There’s a TMZ article from 2006 with a, shall we say, certain familiar ring to it: “Blah blah blah, female-centered film exceeded all expectations...yadda-yadda-yadda...industry analysts surprised,” etc., etc. etc. As Meryl Streep’s formidable Gordon Gekko-in-stilettos magazine mogul Miranda Priestly might say to those industry Suits who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the existence of fifty percent of their audience, “Details of your incompetence do not interest me.”

BRING IT ON (2000)

This broadly played late-summer sleeper is actually packing a lot of heavy metaphorical lumber for a teen flick about a cheerleading competition. Kirsten Dunst is the new head of the Toros, who cheer for the (rich, white) Rancho Carne High School in Los Angeles; they're gearing up for the national championships, which they've won the past six years with the spectacular routines provided by departing team leader Big Red. But when a new girl with a gymnastics background and an attitude -- Eliza Dushku, who was too cool for Buffy the Vampire Slayer's school -- joins the squad, she has unsettling news. It turns out that Big Red was stealing her plays from the fly girls who cheer for the (black, poor) East Compton Clovers, thus making the Toros the cheerleading equivalent of Pat Boone to the Clovers' Little Richard. Dunst actually does her best to rationalize this cultural parasitism rather than destroy her cheerleading institution overnight, but the situation becomes intolerable after the Clovers attend a Toros game and mock their blonde plagiarists by performing the stolen moves in the stands. In the end, both teams attend the finals and show that they can use their brains and talents to compete honorably on the field of battle. There is, however, one scene that shows that contemporary standards of empowerment may be thornier, and weirder, than is commonly acknowledged. Dunst offers the Clovers, who have been prevented from attending the national competition by financial hardship, the chance to come by talking her father into getting his company to sponsor them, but the head Clover (Gabrielle Union) contemptuously rejects the offer, telling Dunst that they don't need her charity; they'll raise the money themselves, their own way. Their own way turns out to be going on an "Oprah"-like TV show and raising contributions by guilt-tripping viewers with their tale of woe. I guess it's honest labor and not charity if it helps "Oprah" kill an hour.

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

Such '70s blaxploitation films as Coffy and Foxy Brown may have made Pam Grier a cult star, but it was always a degraded form of stardom, and not just because the movies were cheap genre knockoffs; she may have had the chance to show that she could hold the camera and kick ass in the final reel, but she still also had to get her top ripped off before being raped by guys who looked like the Ku Klux Klan's answer to Uncle Fester, while being called things like "this big-jugged jigaboo." Jackie Brown catches up with Grier more than twenty years down the road, when she's at an age when Hollywood regards actresses as disposable. It's not a great age to be a flight attendant, either, which is why Jackie is working for a low-grade Mexican airline and acting as a courier for Los Angeles-based gun dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Both Ordell and the federal agents setting up a case against him regard Jackie as a pawn who can easily be taken out of play at any moment. But -- and here's the key difference between this and Grier's '70s vehicles -- the movie respects her. The way she looks through Tarantino's lens, you sort of picture the camera shuffling its feet nervously as it tries to work up the nerve to ask her if she's been seeing anybody lately. And so Ordell, whose fearsomeness would cut him a lot more ice in a different Tarantino movie, is reduced to a comic figure; for all his bluster and firepower, his assumption that the middle-aged black woman with the low-paying job must be a bit player (which Jackie will use against him, and against the feds, too), makes him ridiculous. The only man in the movie who can see Jackie for what she is remains Robert Forster's bail bondsman Max Cherry, who, unlike the film's younger, strutting cocks, lacks the ego and capacity for self-deception that might get in the way of his seeing clearly what's in front of him. Tarantino included a riff (borrowed from Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes) on the arrogance of Superman in the second Kill Bill film, and Jackie Brown is in some ways a black, female Superman fantasy, except that Jackie doesn't have to put on a pair of eyeglasses to trick the dull-witted into thinking she's no match for them.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)

Long before Joss Whedon was a small-screen institution, he was just a fresh-faced young script doctor with a dream. That dream was to create a richly detailed fantasy world featuring nubile teenage girls. Sure, you’re saying: how does that make him any different than millions of other guys? Here’s how: his nubile teenage girls kicked ass. And not just any ass, but demonic vampire ass! Within a decade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would find its way onto television and prove a major cult hit, giving the country a brand new definition of girl power and adding an entirely new dimension to teen angst as Buffy Summers and her Scoobies battled monsters and bloodsuckers at Sunnydale High. But it all started with this low-budget big-screen number. Whedon, once he’d decided he was a highbrow auteur, more or less disavowed the Buffy movie, but in many ways, it holds up a lot better than people give it credit for: it doesn’t take itself so deadly serious, it has tons of terrific comic turns from Paul Reubens and Stephen Root in supporting roles, and while Kristy Swanson’s Buffy may not carry the emotional weight that Sarah Michelle Gellar’s did, she looks mighty fine in a half-shirt, and she furthers the cause of female empowerment the way only a vampire slayer can. She’s rough, she’s tough, and she maintains her keen fashion sense: what could be more feminine than that?

Click here for Part Two!

Related Posts: Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part One & Part Two)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Video of the Day: Wonder Woman '67

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:45:00 GMT

One of the most hotly contested superhero properties on the market, with virtually every other big-name crimefighter already appearing on the big screen, is Wonder Woman. The upcoming Joel Silver production, slated for a 2009 release, has already gone through a multitude of changes, and fans crawl the internet for any word of what's to come: who will play the Amazon princess? Is there a completed screenplay? With Joss Whedon bailing on the project, is there any truth to the rumor that the Wachowski Brothers are next in line to direct?

We can't tell you the answers to those questions, but we can tell you this: as hokey as the 1976 TV series with Lynda Carter was, it could have been worse. Much, much worse. If you don't believe us, take a look at this: the only surviving footage from a 1967 attempt by William Dozier, producer of the ultra-campy 1966 Batman television series, to work the same dark magic on Princess Diana. It looks like it was filmed for about $3, it apparently has mistaken the warrior princess for Nancy Drew's doofy friend Bess, and star Ellie Wood Walker (best known as "Mime #3" from Easy Rider) gives a performance that lives up to her middle name.

The Ten Best Murderous Duos in Movies, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The life of a killer can be a lonely one, whether pursued professionally or as a hobby. In last year's Mr. Brooks, Kevin Costner, who based on some of the stories about his on-the-set behavior that have hit the papers ought to have had some experience with having no one to play with, was so lonesome that he had to summon up an imaginary friend (William Hurt) to give him someone to talk to on those long nights of stalking and shooting. (In the course of the movie, a real person who knows about his secret life approaches him and asks if he can apprentice with him as an aspiring psycho, but since this asshole is played by Dane Cook, having to put him up with him just means Costner needs to lean on the nonexistent Hurt more than ever.) Michael Haneke's new English-language version of his 1996 Funny Games also underlines the need for a killer to bring along a spare, someone with whom he can trade wisecracks and rely on to keep an eye on the prey and one hand on the remote control. (If you haven't seen the movie, don't ask. And if you haven't seen the movie, also don't see the movie.) Then there's Pete and Sidney, who work for Joe Brody in the classic The Big Sleep. After Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe meets them, he asks Brody about the weedier, goofier one: "Is he any good?" "Sidney?" replies Brody. "He's company for Pete." ("He kills me," says Pete, by way of an unsolicited testimonial.) These pairs kill us:

Henry (Michael Rooker) & Otis (Tom Towles), HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1990)

When watching a couple of characters prancing through a movie laying waste to half the cast, you might let your mind wander to the question of just how these folks met. Are there conventions? Classified ads? It's easier to understand why a serial killer would want another pair of hands than to envision how he'd go shopping for someone to supply them. There are any number of ways that such a conversation could go wrong. Not the least of Henry's virtues is that it addresses head on the issue of how a solo killer goes about trying to establish a franchise. Henry is already well into his serial-killing career when, after a good long stretch on Otis's couch, he concludes that his old friend might have the stuff to join him on his visits to the homes of strangers. For a while, it does look as if having the fun-loving Otis along has made it more rewarding to rampage around town performing random acts of dismemberment. But, as our nation has learned since 2000, being a good person with whom to have a beer is not the best qualification for a job requiring careful planning and precise execution. Careless and uncontrollable, Otis finally proves himself an unacceptable risk and winds up as one more load of filler weighing down a Hefty bag. Like Rick in Casablanca, Henry is forced to consider the possibility that he is destined to be one of life's romantic loners.

Mingo (Earl Holliman) & Fante (Lee Van Cleef), THE BIG COMBO (1955)

There’s a lot to love about Joseph H. Lewis’ nasty little noir: the gorgeously dark camerawork by John Alton, the snarling screenplay by Philip Yordan (its vicious snap most clearly evident in an early scene where the mob boss, played toothily by Richard Conte, chews out a losing boxer), the barely sublimated sex and the creative violence. It’s one of the best movies of its kind, and criminally underseen by audiences both today and when it was released. One of the most enjoyable bits of the movie, though, is the presence of Mingo and Fante. These two characters, with their bizarrely unlikely names, are the goons of Conte’s Mr. Brown, and they’re memorably played by the lunkheaded Earl Holliman and the domineering Lee Van Cleef, respectively. Alternately menacing, comical and even sympathetic, they’re two of the best-written minor characters in noir history, but one of the reasons that they’re fondly remembered by a handful of film buffs today (Joss Whedon named a couple of characters in his Firefly series after them) is because, predating Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever by a good twenty years, they are perhaps the first murderous duo on the big screen to be portrayed as gay. Of course, this being the ‘50s, neither Yordan or Lewis could come right out and say so, but it’s made plenty clear for anyone who’s paying attention: Fante and Mingo share a room together, sleep feet apart, bicker like a married couple, express a great deal of, er, manly fondness for one another, and even dine together. Which, in fact, leads to the movie’s big oh-what-a-giveaway line: holed up in a ratty dump waiting for the heat to die down from their latest killing, our gruesome twosome are reduced to dining on take-home lunchmeat, leading Mingo to lament, “I can’t swallow any more salami!” Even if the movie version of The Big Sleep had been allowed to be as explicit about the sexuality of Joel Cairo and Wilmer Cook as the book was, they wouldn’t have been this much fun.

Al (Charles McGraw) & Max (William Conrad), THE KILLERS (1946)

These guys have a special weapon: the dialogue from the classic original short story by Ernest Hemingway. In the story, two strangers walk into the small town diner where they plan to kill "the Swede" for reasons unspecified, and, feeling serenely untouchable in their big-city arrogance, proceed to taunt the rubes while they sit there and wait for their target to walk in. ("We’re killing him for a friend. Just to oblige a friend, bright boy.") The first fifteen or twenty minutes of this movie amount to probably the most faithful film adaptation that Hemingway ever got: McGraw, the star of the cult noir The Narrow Margin (and a man who looked as if he'd been carved out of granite and was royally pissed off about it) and Conrad (TV's Cannon and the narrator of the Bullwinkle cartoons) just play out their little scene together, and then the Heningway story runs out. The movie, which was co-written by Anthony Veiller and the uncredited John Huston and Richard Brooks, and which is not bad at all, proceeds to fill itself out to feature length by having an investigator, played by Edmond O'Brien, fill in the backstory of why the Swede — Burt Lancaster, in his film debut — had a price on his head. There was a sort-of remake in 1964, directed by Don Siegel, which is best remembered as Ronald Reagan's last film as an actor. (He plays the head villain and gets to slap Angie Dickinson around.) The remake, which hews closer to the Lancaster movie than to the Hemingway, eliminates the O'Brien-investigator figure and has the killers themselves — called Charlie and Lee, and played by old pro Lee Marvin and younger hepcat punk Clu Gulager — decide to find out why they'd been hired. This version lacks the crackle that the earlier one had, but it does have a scene where the title characters trap Norman Fell in a steam bath while Gulager mockingly wipes his sunglasses on Mr. Roper's head.

Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) & Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), LA CEREMONIE (1995)

Bonnaire and Huppert are two of France's greatest and most fearless actresses, and it's a wonder it took a director so long to put them together. But when Claude Chabrol finally did so in his masterful thriller, the result was quite possibly the finest psychotic duo in French cinema. Bonnaire plays Sophie, an illiterate yet hyper-competent young maid for a rich family, and Huppert is Jeanne, a nosy, gossipy postal clerk who becomes her friend. "What a pair," Sophie's employer (Jean-Pierre Cassel) exclaims. "One can't read and the other reads our mail!" It's clear that the two women need each other — Jeanne, with her playfully forceful personality, draws Sophie out of her shell, while Sophie gives Jeanne a sympathetic ear compared to the other townspeople who shun her for the accidental killing of her young daughter. Soon, the two of them are partners in crime, getting into all manner of mischief around town and at the charity where they volunteer. But after Sophie is fired for trying to blackmail the family's pregnant daughter, she and Jeanne sneak in one night to take revenge. The night begins innocently enough — some torn clothing here, some ruined bed sheets there — but quickly turns deadly once the girls see the shotguns hanging on the wall. Jeanne wants to have fun by scaring them, while Sophie insists on loading the guns, yet it's entirely possible that they hadn't planned to kill anyone until Cassel happens upon the gun-toting duo in his kitchen. Once they've killed him, they have no choice but to kill off the rest of the family as well. For all the big-screen psychopaths who plan their murders down to the last detail, cases like Sophie's and Jeanne's are arguably more chilling, as the killings aren't a premeditated act of vengeance but the climax of a prank gone horribly wrong. Funny games, indeed.

Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey) & Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)

Like Sophie and Jeanne, Heavenly Creatures' heroines Pauline Parker (Lynskey) and Juliet Hulme (Winslet) are a pair who first bond over their shared outcast status. In their case, they both suffer from health problems, and as their classmates take exercise, they become fast friends. Together they rule over a lurid, elaborate fantasy world of their own creation. The pair are inseparable, spending every possible moment together, and they eventually their frenzied teenage hormones lead them to experiment with sex. But more than anything else, it's their fantasies that sustain them and help them to escape their difficult lives in 1950s New Zealand, but they also lead to their downfall. From the beginning, they look down on anyone else, and eventually this disdain turns to paranoia about those who would threaten their happiness together. Of all the perceived threats to the world they've created, the most threatening is Pauline's pragmatic, hardworking mother, so one day the girls decide to join her on a leisurely stroll, and when they're alone on a path, they bludgeon her to death. Heavenly Creatures was based on a real-life case, and while the facts might have lent themselves to a sensationalistic treatment, director Peter Jackson keeps us with his heroines all the way. The film follows Pauline and Juliet into their fantasies (rendered in loving detail by a pre-Lord of the Rings Jackson), mostly because it's the only way to truly understand what led them to carry out their hideous crime. Along the way, we grow to love the sinners even as we hate their sin, and it's because of this that the film's final scene, in which Pauline and Juliet are forced apart by the courts, is almost unbearably sad.

— Paul Clark; Phil Nugent; Leonard Pierce

Click here for Part 2.

That Guy!: Stephen Root

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Okay, that's enough of the artsy-fartsy European creeps. Let's get back to America! And they don't come much American-er than Big Steve Root, one of the most prolific character actors in the business today. For a guy whose first film role featured him unseen in a toilet (although, considering the movie was Crocodile Dundee II, maybe it's just as well), Stephen Root has a rather highbrow acting background: for years prior to the kick-off of a remarkably rich film and television career, he was a respected member of the National Shakespeare Company. His first major recognition as an actor came when he portrayed the flighty, meddling billionaire Jimmy James as part of the high-powered cast of NewsRadio, and even with dozens of film roles to his credit, he's probably best-known -- and best-paid -- for that role and his voice-over work on King of the Hill, where he plays, among other roles, the hapless Bill Dauterive. A number of directors have enjoyed his work enough to make him a regular member of their repertory companies, particularly Mike Judge, Kevin Smith, and the Coen Brothers; Root's ability to play extremely eccentric roles while never giving the same characterization twice makes him especially sought-after by directors who specialize in character roles, and Root admitted in a recent interview that being killed by the Coens (as he, or at least his character, is in No Country for Old Men) has been the high point of his career to date. Having just celebrated his 56th birthday, Root -- who, to be perfectly honest, looks like he's been playing a 56-year-old for the lion's share of his career -- no doubt has plenty of years ahead of him both on the big screen, playing his specialty of suit-wearing middlemen who have something extremely wrong with them, and in voice-over, where he's proven to have exceptional talent. And with most of his comedic work for television widely available on DVD, a case can be made for Stephen Root as the preeminent comic character actor of the 1990s.

Where to see Stephen Root at his best:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)

There are two kinds of Buffy fans in the world: those who liked the movie and wondered why the subsequent TV show took itself so damn seriously, and those who hated the movie and look at it as an embarrassing shell from whence the brilliant television series emerged. Unfortunately for those of us in the former camp, Joss Whedon -- who created both -- is in the latter camp and all but disowns the movie. But one thing cannot be disputed: the series would have been much improved if Whedon had seen fit to include Stephen Root as the rambling, hilariously clueless Principal Gary Murray, who made the end credits of the film so enjoyable.

OFFICE SPACE (1999)

Outside of NewsRadio and King of the Hill, Office Space forms the third jewel in Stephen Root's crown of 1990s comedy dominance. No performance of his is more memorable, more purely distilled, more quintessentially Root -- in fact, Mike Judge built the entire movie around Root's performance from a series of animated shorts he did years earlier for MTV. While there's plenty to love about this subversive take on the deadening grind of white-collar work, nothing holds the movie together like a single red stapler, and no character is more central to the plot, from beginning to end, than the psychotically ineffectual Milton Waddams. An all-time great comic role.

O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? (2000)

We hate to keep bringing up members of the Coen Brothers Touring Company in this space, but what can we tell you? The boys know a good character actor when they see one. Stephen Root, in his first film with the Coens, has a small but unforgettable role: edging away from comedy and into (literal) tragedy, playing a variant on Tiresius as the recording studio operator and radio station man who first discovers the hidden genius of the Soggy Bottom Boys. Although Root has some funny lines in his scenes, it's his nearly-wordless performance in responding in a transport of bliss to "Man of Constant Sorrow" that is so astounding here.