The Screengrab : kathryn bigelow

Trailer Review: The Hurt Locker

Paul Clark — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A lot of ink (both literal and figurative) has been spilled by the entertainment media about how American moviegoers don’t much care to see movies about the War in Iraq, no matter how well they’re reviewed or how many big stars appear in them. Alas, it appears that The Hurt Locker will be the latest victim of this trend, despite getting some of the best reviews of any recent war film. It’s a shame, since of all the Iraq War movies to date, this one looks to have the broadest appeal, being sold not as a political statement but as a visceral war thriller. Sure, you say, but does it look any good? You bet it does. Kathryn Bigelow can do hard-R action as well as any filmmaker of either gender, and I’m looking forward to seeing stars Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie anchoring a high-profile movie like this. Besides, it’s much more rewarding for me to watch movies that let me infer my own conclusions about war than it is to have the filmmakers’ opinions rammed down my throat for two-odd hours. And so what if nobody else sees this? It’ll be their loss, I reckon.

Screengrab Predicts Summer 2009: Dishonorable Mention (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:30:00 GMT

In Part Three of this list, we presented The Screengrab’s consensus picks for the Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2009.

Herewith, our individual picks and dishonorable mentions...

Andrew:

1. Wolverine
2. PUBLIC ENEMIES (July 1)

Aside from Bonnie and Clyde, The Untouchables and that Star Trek episode where they went to the gangster planet (“I don’t think you’re stupid, Mr. Krako”), I can’t think of many successful modern tommy-gun stories. Let’s see...Mobsters? The Cotton Club? Billy Bathgate? Sure, Michael Mann is a good director, but when Johnny Depp isn’t swinging for the fences with an Ed Wood, a Sweeney Todd or a Captain Jack Sparrow, he’s just dull as dishwater, and without some truly stellar reviews and/or word-of-mouth, this one's likely to disappear in the crowded summer shuffle.

3. Land of the Lost
4. Transformers...yeah, that’s right, I said it.
5. TAKING WOODSTOCK (August 14)

Ang Lee has certainly made some excellent, memorable films...but this may not be one of them. While a behind-the-scenes history of the 1969 Woodstock music festival sounds like an interesting (if someone redundant) subject, the trailer makes the whole thing look like a third-rate HBO Original Movie (or maybe a second-rate Showtime one). Chances are, Taking Woodstock will only really be remembered as the vehicle that killed off Demetri Martin’s career as a big screen leading man.

Scott:

1. GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (August 7)

Perhaps not the end of civilization as we know it, but you can see it from here.

2. Land of the Lost
3. The Taking of Pelham 123
4. Imagine That
5. Year One

Nick:

1. Land of the Lost
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3. Year One
4. The Taking of Pelham 123
5. BRÜNO (July 10)

Brüno may very well live up to its hype, but given its subject matter, a large swath of America won’t even consider seeing it. Consequently, its respectable but far-from-enormous box-office take will make it seem like a disappointment.

Paul:

1. Land of the Lost
2. G-FORCE (July 24)

Even if this didn’t look like total garbage -- which it does -- it would be foolish to open a family comedy about a team of guinea pig spies with sassy celebrity voices the week after the latest Harry Potter movie. With the Boy Who Lived facing off against Voldemort, will anyone but Jerry Bruckheimer care about G-Force? I sure hope not.

3. FUNNY PEOPLE (July 31)

Broad Adam Sandler comedies can still bring in the crowds. Adam Sandler dramedies? Not so much. While I applaud Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Judd Apatow for tackling more serious material than usual, I just can’t see this connecting with multiplex crowds, particularly not with a trailer that is light on laughs and heavy on sentiment. Perhaps Apatow would have been better off taking the film to Toronto and garnering some solid festival buzz before rolling it out in the fall.

4. Imagine That
5. THE HURT LOCKER (June 26)

Ever since it received rave reviews from Toronto last year, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama has been sold more as a kickass combat action thriller than as a political statement. So why would Summit Entertainment open the film opposite Transformers, the one blockbuster of the summer that’s practically guaranteed to have loud, kinetic combat scenes and none of the audience baggage that comes with Iraq War movies? Way to piss that Twilight clout right down your legs, guys.

Click Here For The Hits (Part One & Two), The Bombs (Part Three), The Toss-Ups (Part Four) and The Honorable Mentions (Part Five)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Paul Clark

Ron Silver, 1946 - 2009

Phil Nugent — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Ron Silver has died, at 62, after a two year battle with esophageal cancer. The living image of the "New York actor", Silver, was something of a specialist in fast-talking, saturnine cynics, an association that became even greater after he won a Tony Award for his semi-legendary performance as a Hollywood shark in David Mamet's 1988 Broadway hit Speed-the-Plow. Silver's performances in the Mamet play and in David Rabe's 1984 Hurlyburly--neither of which, sadly, he got to repeat on film--cemented his image as the great white way's modern notion of a successful movie industry sleazeball. Ironically, he never became the star in movies that he was onstage, but he had a long and healthy career in TV and movies anyway. After a barely detectable film debut in the unfunny underground comedy Tunnel Vision (1977) and a recurring role alongside a fellow Broadway baby on 1980's The Stockard Channing Show, Silver began to develop a name for himself in movies with his rambunctiously funny performances in the romantic comedies Best Friends (1982), in which he played, yes, a Hollywood producer, and Lovesick (1983), in which his character, a Hollywood star returning to his New York stage roots, gave him the chance to mock Al Pacino.

Throughout the rest of the decade, Silver would move freely from stage to TV to movie roles, including a starring role in Sidney Lumet's Garbo Talks (1984). His peak of national visibility probably came in 1989 and 1990, when he played Jerry Lewis's son in a multi-episode story arc of the cult series Wiseguy; gave the performance of his movie career as the lead in Paul Mazursky's superb movie version of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies, a Love Story; stalked Jamie Lee Curtis as a deranged stockbroker turned serial gunman in Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel; starred as a leftish screenwriter navigating the 1950s blacklist era in the British TV film Fellow Traveller; and don a Groucho mustache to play Alan Dershowitz in counterpoint to Jeremy Irons's Oscar-winning turn as Claus von Bulow in Barbet Schroeder's torn-from-the-headlines Reversal of Fortune.

Though he continued to work steadily, his days of playing leads in theatrical features that people went to see receded behind him, and he began to enjoy his best opportunities in movies as a campy villain, in such movies as the Jean-Claude Van Damme picture Timecop (1994), where he confronted his younger self with a plea that he lay off the candy bars, and The Arrival (2006), where he got to deliver a speech explaining that global warming was part of a plan for an imminent extraterrestrial takeover of the Earth. (He parodied this side of his career in the famous Ben Stiller-directed, unaired TV pilot Heat Vision and Jack, in which he played a sinister character named Ron Silver whose acting career was a cover for his principal occupation of serving the conspiracy to install a New World Order.) He made his directing debut with the 1993 TV film Lifepod, a sci-fi variation on Hitchcock's Lifeboat. He returned to the courtroom to play Robert Shapiro in American Tragedy, a 2000 O. J. Simpson docudrama written by Norman Mailer, was hilarious as tennis hustler Bobby Riggs in the TV film When Billie Beat Bobby (2001), convincingly dogged as Angelo Dundee in Michael Mann's The Greatest biopic Ali (2001), and reunited with Lumet for Find Me Guilty (2006), yet another fact-based courtroom drama, for which he was upgraded from lawyer to judge.

Silver also had recurring or regular roles on the TV series Chicago Hope, Veronica's Closet, Skin, and The West Wing, where he played a political consultant who, over the course of the show, had a political conversion from left to right. Silver himself experienced his own sea change after September 11, 2001, and became a highly public proponent for his changed views, making the rounds of the TV talk shows, appearing at the 2004 Republican National Convention, and blogging for Pajamas Media. He also narrated FahrenHYPE 9/11 (a 2004 documentary response to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and co-directing, with Kevin Knoblock, the documentary Broken Promises: The United Nations at 60. His last performance was in the 2008 Distant Runners.

Five Films for a Super Bowl Hangover

Nick Schager — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The big one is over. Steelers fans are euphoric. Cardinals fans are dejected. And both sets of sports fanatics (as well as legions of others) are spending today suffering through some serious postgame, post-booze illness. While the country's refusal to consider today a national holiday has forced most to trudge to work nursing one mother of a headache and/or upset stomach, those fortunate enough (or sick enough) to be home are likely in need of some medicine, and at The Screengrab, we aim to please. Herewith, five films that'll help soothe that Super Bowl morning-after malaise.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

For a fuzzy psyche, nothing quite goes down as smoothly as some inspired idiocy, and few recent comedies have delivered the absurdist goods as hilariously as Will Ferrell’s ode to ‘70s sexism, bad hair and bear-fighting. “Milk was a bad choice!” says Ron; Anchorman is an ideal hangover balm, says I.

Overboard

There are few things to outright love about this 1987 Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell comedy, but like a pop song that gets under your skin after the 800th spin, repeated childhood viewings (thanks, New York’s WPIX!) confirmed that this rich-meets-poor trifle is something akin to a cinematic lullaby. Turn it on, and turn yourself off.

The Last Boy Scout

Action-movie cacophony isn’t exactly what a pounding head demands, but Tony Scott’s 1991 gem is so over-the-top ludicrous that one’s laughter usually drowns out the gunfire and explosions. Written by Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black in an apparent aim to include every genre cliché known to man, it’s like taking a goofy 2-hour class in ‘80s slam-bang cinema.

Point Break

One-upping even The Last Boy Scout, which came out the same year, Kathryn Bigelow’s saga about undercover feds, surfing gurus and president mask-donning bank robbers is the apex of over-the-top action cinema, both for its abject ridiculousness and the fact that said silliness doesn’t hinder the film from delivering thrilling, expertly orchestrated set pieces. It’s two hours your weary, alcohol-addled brain will thank you for.

The Foot Fist Way

A slightly sluggish mind is perfect for fully enjoying Danny McBride’s little seen off-kilter comedy from last year, in which McBride stars as a local Tae Kwon Do instructor whose lack of self-awareness is only matched by his failure at every facet of life. The film’s consistently strange vibe will amuse, and at 87 minutes, it’ll still leave plenty of time in the day for a well-earned recovery nap.

Screengrab Presents: The 25 Greatest Horror Films of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

This may be the scariest Halloween in recent memory.

Whatever happens in the election, it's going to be a nightmare for tens of millions of Americans. But until then, we’ve got a few days to dress like Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, drink pumpkin-flavored beer and relax with ghosts, vampires and zombies instead of all those scary talking heads on TV.

There was some debate here in the Screengrab Crypt regarding whether this was a list of the BEST horror films of all time or the SCARIEST (or if there’s a difference)...which naturally got us thinking about just what makes a film scary in the first place.

When my mother-in-law was a wee little French-Canadian, she went to a screening of Murders in the Rue Morgue where a theater employee in a gorilla suit popped out when the lights came up, sending the audience screaming into the streets of Nashua, New Hampshire...now THAT’S scary.

On the other hand, there are some horror movies that skip the gotcha! moments in favor of sheer dread, a creeping mood of hopeless, helpless paranoia that haunts your nights long after the adrenalin rush from the guy in the gorilla suit has faded. I remember squirming my way through all the maggots and vomited intestines of Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell as a teenager, but what scared me the most was the Italian film’s pervasive sense of inescapable doom...

...not that I have especially fond memories of the film. Just because it scared me didn’t mean I liked it, in the same way I’d rather read a 700-page grad school dissertation on the cultural significance of the torture porn craze than sit through Saw V.

Like comedy, it’s hard to nail down the secret of great horror, but we know it when it lurches up...RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!!!

Just kidding. Enjoy the list, and Happy Halloween from your pals here at The Screengrab!

25. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

What is it with zombies? Why do we love them so? We’ve got at least a half dozen killer corpse movies on this list...but personally, I’ve always had a special place in my braaaaiiiiiinnnssss for Dan O’Bannon’s punk-rock tribute to the genre, starring the venerable, indispensable B-movie staple Clu Gulager as the boss of two medical warehouse employees who accidentally unleash a zombie apocalypse. According to the film’s clever, way-better-than-it-has-to-be script (also by O’Bannon), Night of the Living Dead was a true story, but the government covered the whole thing up...and they would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for a mishap involving a missing barrel of deadly zombie toxin and the aforementioned bumbling warehouse employees: Freddy (whose friends are rockin’ out to the Damned and the Flesh Eaters -- and, for some reason, getting naked -- in a nearby graveyard) and Frank, whose eventual fate is actually kinda touching thanks to a horror movie hall-of-fame performance by character actor James Karen. One of my all-time favorites in the “disappearing characters” genre, Return is frightening, funny and exciting by turns, and pioneered “fast zombie” technology long before Danny Boyle hogged all the credit in 28 Days Later. Plus, the soundtrack totally kicks ass...and, of course, BRAAAAIIIINNNSSSS!!!!!

24. THE INNOCENTS (1961)

One of the most effective ghost story movies ever made is also perhaps the finest of all the attempts to adapt Henry James to the screen. (John Mortimer and a pre-In Cold Blood Truman Capote worked on the screenplay, which is based on a theatrical adaptation of James' The Turn of the Screw.) Deborah Kerr is a fascinating jangle of authoritative command and nervous anxiety as the new governess who thinks she's seen the apparitions of her predecessor and that woman's lover, the valet Quint, who both came to mysterious ends. Ten years later, Michael Winner's The Nightcomers would offer a speculative version of what happened before, with Marlon Brando as Quint. That movie is best remembered as a cautionary tale involving how it came to be distributed in this country: Universal agreed to pick it up as part of a deal to cancel its contract with Brando, who they assumed would never have another hit in his life. Of course, his next picture was The Godfather. Hollywood: it's a scary place.

23. THE STEPFATHER (1987)

A wholly unexpected high point for the slash/fill-in-the-blank-from-Hell genre, with an original script by the matchless crime novelist Donald Newlove which achieves just the right balance of wit and nastiness. Terry O'Quinn makes anonymity terrifying as the title character, a serial murderer of the type known as a "family annihilator" -- unable to deal with cracks in his fantasy ideal of a perfect family, he keeps wiping out one domestic unit and moving on to another. The movie was inspired by Newlove's meditating on the case of the infamously colorless John List, who butchered his family in 1971, and who was still unapprehended when the movie came out; he was arrested in 1989, after being the subject of an episode of America's Most Wanted, and died in prison last March. A TV movie about List was made in 1993. He was played by Robert Blake.

22. NEAR DARK (1987)

Kathryn Biglow's artspolitation movie about a "family" of white trash vampires traveling the back roads in a van with the windows blacked out has an unusually potent mix of striking visual beauty and cutthroat action. Bill Paxton and Lance Henrikson have never looked closer to shitkicker heaven than in the movie's bloody set piece in a roadhouse; the wonderful, and much-missed Jenny Wright is hard to resist as the teen-sister figure, who winsomely infects the country-boy hero (Adrian Pasdar) with vampirism so that she'll have someone nice to talk to between massacres. And where have you gone, Jenette Goldstein? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

21. THE MUMMY (1932)

The legendary cinematographer Karl Freund, whose credits ranged from Metropolis and The Last Laugh to 149 episodes of I Love Lucy, worked as a director of English-language films for only three years in the early-to-mid '30s. This was his Hollywood directorial debut; the last film he directed was the 1935 horror movie Mad Love, and that title would have been a neat fit for this one, too. It stars Boris Karloff as a 3,000-year-old Egyptian who was entombed alive for trying to restore his dead beloved to life; resurrected, he gets right back on the case, having identified the heroine, Zita Johann, as the woman's reincarnation. Slow and dreamily poetic, this is very different from later mummy movies -- Karloff is unbandaged for most of the picture -- and also very different from most of the other classic Universal monster movies. It's the rare film about eternal love than makes you appreciate the fact that most loves have a natural shelf life.

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

Contributors: The Zombie Andrew Osborne, Kill Nugent

In Other Blogs: Canadian Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Many luminaries from the film blogosphere attended the Toronto International Film Festival this week. (I would have gone, but I don’t speak Canadian.) Spoutblog chatted with Paris, Not France director Adria Petty to find out the story behind those cancelled screenings. “I’ll just tell you the truth,” she said. “The truth is that we just didn’t want the film pirated. There’s a lot of people involved in the film that own it or financed it. It was in a lot of different camps and different layers. And basically, at the end of the day, instead of having the whole thing canceled or pulled because of all these greedy or annoying people, Paris and I, who wanted the film to screen at Toronto and were honored by it, we were like, look let’s just do it once in one big theater. And then we put the night vision goggles in one time––because everybody is like, who pays for the night vision?”

In this Toronto dispatch, Green Cine Daily asks the musical question: “Does postmodernism have a future?...Without a doubt, this year's grand test case for the future viability of any form of large-scale political cinema, if not for outsized American auteur cinema in general, is Steven Soderbergh's Che. Divided into two full-length films, each slightly over two hours, Che could be the ultimate sinkhole for our day, a giant leftist vacuum into which someone's money vanished without a trace. How can this film even exist, and who is its presumed audience? To Soderbergh's credit, there seems to have been little consideration of this question. I would like to be able to weigh in passionately on the debate around Che, but the sad truth is, there's little onscreen to justify passions in either direction.”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson applauds our Canadian oppressors. “One difference between Canadians and Europeans: They are not into power-tripping you at the entrance to movie theaters. I arrived too late (about ten minutes before starting time) for the one and only press/industry screening of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker yesterday…Then word came that no more seats could be found. Some of us (the Americans and Canadians) were saddened and disappointed and frustrated. Others (those with European accents, though it is possible they were Quebecois) were indignant. They waved their passes and accused the theater staff of ignoring them or cheating them in some way….Finally, a staffer had to explain: There. Were. No. More. Seats. She was not trying to cheat people out of seeing the Kathryn Bigelow movie. She was not attempting to wield arbitrary authority over a gaggle of eager festivalgoers in order to make herself feel powerful and important. She was doing her job and telling the truth: The theater was full.”

Slant supplies its own Canadian content with a look at Adoration. “A characteristically masterful welter of bad vibrations, Atom Egoyan's latest finds the director back in Canadian Traumaland after his Hollywood sojourn in Where the Truth Lies. Keyed to the characters' sense of lingering grief, the narrative unfurls as a time-hopping maze of action and consequence—its deftness and delicacy shame Arriaga's tawdry temporal gymnastics in The Burning Plain. A button-pushing essay by a high-schooler (Devon Bostick) gives the absence-riddled film its center: Turning an article about a failed terrorist plot into a faux-eulogy to his dead parents, the boy uncorks a reservoir of sorrow that brings together his uncle (a surprisingly excellent Scott Speedman), teacher (Egoyan axiom Arsinée Kanjian), and other members of the community… Moody, gliding filmmaking and ripples of quizzical humor save it from being a lugubrious game of therapeutic musical chairs.

And in List-o-Mania, PopMatters offers the Top Ten Things I Loved About TIFF 08, including the return of Debra Winger. “She was only in about four scenes of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, but in her scant screen time, she conducted a master class in scene-stealing as the mother of the title character and Anne Hathaway’s noxious Kym. Yes, it may be the ‘mother’ role, but Winger is understatedly elegant, and rock-solid. Here’s to hoping this high-profile release gains her some traction on the awards circuit, in tandem with Hathaway. It’s a small, quietly fuming turn that should be lauded for its poetic simplicity.”

Hathaway Hotness, Rourke Smackdowns Head Venice Comp Lineup

Paul Clark — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Today brought the announcement of the Competition lineup for next month’s 65th annual Venice International Film Festival. Among the highest-profile American titles in the lineup was the upcoming Jonathan Demme film, Rachel Getting Married (starring the lovely Anne Hathaway, pictured at right) and the sorely-missed Debra Winger. Another intriguing title is The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Mickey Rourke, no doubt eager to try out a new sport after his abortive boxing career. Of course, if you’re looking for something really great, a solid bet would be the latest film by animation master Hayao Miyazaki, entitled Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea, also in Competition.

Other filmmakers of note in Competition include: Takeshi Kitano (Achilles and the Tortoise), Barbet Schroeder (Inju, la Bete dans l’ombre), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Mamoru Oshii (The Sky Crawlers), Werner Schroeter (Nuit de Chien), and Ferzan Oztepek (Un giorno perfetto). Then there’s the directorial debut of Babel screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, entitled The Burning Plain. Expect a trio of interlocking stores and plenty of tortured, writerly multi-culti coincidence.

Here’s the full Competition slate:

Darren Aronofsky- The Wrestler
Guillermo Arriaga- The Burning Plain
Pupi Avati- Il papà di Giovanna
Marco Bechis- BirdWatchers
Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic- L’Autre
Kathryn Bigelow- Hurt Locker
Pappi Corsicato- Il seme della discordia
Jonathan Demme- Rachel Getting Married
Haile Gerima- Teza
Aleksey German Jr.- Bumažnyj soldat (Paper Soldier)
Semih Kaplanoglu- Süt
Takeshi Kitano- Akires to kame (Achilles and the Tortoise)
Hayao Miyazaki- Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea)
Amir Naderi- Vegas: Based on a True Story
Mamoru Oshii- The Sky Crawlers
Ferzan Özpetek- Un giorno perfetto
Christian Petzold- Jerichow
Barbet Schroeder- Inju, la Bête dans l’ombre
Werner Schroeter- Nuit de chien
Tariq Teguia- Gabbla (Inland)
YU Lik-wai- Dangkou (Plastic City)

Strangely enough, this year’s Out of Competition selections are more impressive-looking overall than the titles that are actually competing. Playing outside of competition are new films from the likes of Abbas Kiarostami (Shirin, starring Juliette Binoche), Claire Denis (35 Rhums), Agnes Varda (Les Plages d’Agnes), a new version of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La Rabbia, and short films by Manoel de Oliveira (Do Visivel ao Invisivel) and Jia Zhang-ke (Cry Me a River). Also, there’s a little movie called Burn After Reading by a pair of filmmaking brothers. Didn’t catch their names, I’m afraid.

The 65th Annual Venice International Film Festival runs from August 27 through September 6. Click here for more information.