The Screengrab : keanu reeves

Morning Deal Report: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Reeves

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Star Trek warped its way to the top of the box office, beaming up $76.5 million since its debut Thursday night. X-Men Origins: Wolverine took an expected hit, dropping to second place with $27 million, a 68% dropoff from its opening weekend take. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Obsessed and 17 Again rounded out the top five, while the only other new wide release, Next Day Air, didn't find many takers - it finished sixth with $4 million.

Keanu Reeves will attempt to convey a split personality in a new retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This will be a modern version called Jekyll, per The Hollywood Reporter. "Universal clearly is enamored with the tale as it also has been developing a take on it with Guillermo del Toro, though the two couldn't be more different. Del Toro, who has an affinity for gothic horror as well as creature features, aims to stick more closely to the Stevenson tale. Also, del Toro's project is on the slow track as the filmmaker works on The Hobbit for New Line and MGM, which is expected to take up the next five years. Even when he comes back, he likely will tackle one or two other Universal projects before his version, so a good amount of time will exist between the projects."

Here's a timely announcement: Darren Lynn Bousman, director of three Saw movies, will helm a remake of the Troma classic Mother's Day. "The original Mother's Day revolved around three female friends who, while camping, run afoul of two brothers who engage in murder and rape to impress their deranged mother." Me, I just sent flowers.

For God So Loved the Human Race That He Brought Keanu Reeves Out of Mothballs...

Phil Nugent — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Benjamin A. Plotinsky thinks he's picked up on some recent tendencies in science fiction. " There is a young man, different from other young men. Ancient prophecies foretell his coming, and he performs miraculous feats. Eventually, confronted by his enemies, he must sacrifice his own life—an act that saves mankind from calamity—but in a mystery as great as that of his origin, he is reborn, to preside in glory over a world redeemed. Tell this story to one of the world’s 2 billion Christians, and he’ll recognize it instantly. Tell it to a science-fiction and fantasy fan, and he’ll ask why you’re making minor alterations to the plot of The Matrix or Superman Returns."

The evidence is pretty much right there on the surface, and not just in such moments as the one early in The Matrix where someone tells a not-yet enlightened Keanu Reeves, “You’re my savior, man, my own personal Jesus Christ,” or the later one where Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus tells Reeve's Neo, “Like everyone else, you were born into bondage.” Morpheus also tells Neo, “When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. . . . After he died, the Oracle prophesied his return—that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people.” As Plotinsky notes, "We don’t know [whether Neo is the One] until near the movie’s end, when a comrade-in-arms betrays Neo and Morpheus. Neo chooses to save Morpheus’s life by surrendering his own. The machines kill him—but then he mysteriously returns to life and obliterates his enemies, to the grand accompaniment of trumpets and a choir...It takes no great perception to recognize how closely this plot tracks the basic Christian narrative, though it conflates the Passion with the End Days, adding the betrayal of a Judas to a messianic Second Coming."

As for "Bryan Singer’s underrated Superman Returns (2006) sought to answer an age-old question: Does humanity need gods? Lex Luthor, Superman’s eternal nemesis, answers early on. After Luthor compares himself to Prometheus, an accomplice retorts: 'Sounds great, Lex, but you’re not a god.' 'Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don’t share their power with mankind,' Luthor snarls. He’s in agreement with Lois Lane, who has won a Pulitzer for an op-ed titled 'Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.'" When Superman returns, he proves both his archenemy and his old flame (and mother of his son) wrong: he selflessly saves the world, after which he "remains in a coma until his son...restores him to life. He leaves his hospital room empty until a nurse discovers it, just as Mary and Mary Magdalene find Jesus’s empty tomb."

It may be possible to nod appreciatively at all this and still have doubts about whether sci-fi stories are automatically enriched if they mirror religious mythologies. The Christ story parallels underlying the Matrix trilogy definitely got heavier and more explicit as the movies crashed into their second and third installments, and whether this is coincidental or not, there are plenty of people who think that the movies themselves also got progressively worse. There may be even more people who would argue that any position that depends on including the terms "underrated" and "Superman Returns" in the same sentence has to be a non-starter. To his credit, Plotinsky readily acknowledges that when, "As the world knows to its sorrow, [George] Lucas revived the Star Wars franchise in 1999 with The Phantom Menace," any inclination to downplay the religious-mystical aspects of the earlier films, or treat them playfully, were long gone, and the movies suffered because of it: "...where the original movie never deified Luke, The Phantom Menace describes Anakin—the future Darth Vader, Luke’s father—in terms so messianic as to make Neo blush, repeatedly calling him 'the Chosen One.' The source of the term is in Luke—the Evangelist, that is—where Jewish leaders say of the soon-to-be-crucified Jesus: 'Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!' The movie is fuzzy about who exactly has done the choosing, however—a failure doubtless rooted in Lucas’s carelessness with plots."

Plotinsky makes a case that religious themes, which he also detects in The Terminator, E.T., and I Am Legend, jumped to the front of sci-fi creators' minds as the Cold War receded and geopolitics, which had once fueled the Star Trek series, became too confusing and gray for easy metaphorical consumption. Certainly it was a bleak day for the Star Trek franchise when Earthlings and Klingons learned to just get along. Incidentally, if there's anything to all this, might it not be true that The Terminator, with its save-the-unborn-savior plot and its very-'80s nuclear-terror tremors, is a key transitional work, about a messiah coming to save us from the bomb? (I just thought I'd drop that in here; I'm sure not trying to suggest that Plotinsky's article needed to be any longer.) In any case, we may have already seen things start to shift back: the recently completed Battlestar Galactica series invoked God and gods and religious prophecy left and right, but in the context of an allegory about 9/11 and the development of post-9/11 morality. Will the new Star Trek movie mark a full return to the thrilling days of intergalactic secular warfare involving aliens with growly accents and exotic facial hair? As the old Vulcan proverb says...

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…

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THE MATRIX (1999)

Spoiler alert! The Matrix is people! Just kidding...but really, if you haven’t seen it by now, allow me to ruin the surprise for you: according to Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, the Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change human beings into the copper-top batteries fueling our cybernetic overlords. And yet, when Keanu “Whoa!” Reeves’ messianic Neo finally “wakes up” in his real world goo pod prison, the all-knowing cybernetic overlords just...uh...flush him down a drain so he can be enlisted by Morpheus and his band of human rebels in their fight to overthrow the Matrix. Huh? Wha? That logical inconsistency blew a gaping hole in my willing suspension of disbelief the first time I saw the Wachowski Brothers' cyberpunk classic, yet later I realized I’d worried my pretty little head over nothing...NOT because the disappointing sequels kinda sorta explained away the seeming plot contrivance (since Neo was really the sixth integral anomaly and thus was supposed to find his way to the Architect and blah, blah, blah...), but rather because the original Matrix was so fresh and visually exciting, with a paranoid, unified-field conspiracy theory of a plot that captured the unease (and exhilaration) of life in the digital age better than any movie since...well...Tron. (AO)

THE TERMINATOR (1984) & T2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

A perfect killing machine sent from the future to slay the mother of mankind’s eventual savior, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator was, from 1984 to 1991, the baddest assassin around. But James Cameron’s wildly popular sequel to The Terminator, T2: Judgment Day, further upped the ante, introducing a shape-shifting liquid-metal version of the techno-phobic series’ cyborg destroyers, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), that stands as one of action cinema’s most daunting evildoers. If both the original and T-1000 Terminators are preeminent examples of malevolent machinery, however, it’s Skynet – the government-sanctioned computer program that goes sentient, instigates a nuclear holocaust, and manufactures an army of robots – that proves the franchise’s true villain. Shrewdly foreshadowing our increasing global inter-connectivity, and postulating that condition as ripe for tragedy, Cameron’s series offers us an apocalypse created by the very devices we rely on for our protection, and then – as further evidenced by T3, TV’s Sarah Connor Chronicles, and presumably the forthcoming Terminator: Salvation – also posits those machines as our sole means of achieving post-doomsday deliverance. (NS)

PULSE (2001)

Many J-horror imports exploit fears of technology, but none do so as effectively – and as thoughtfully – as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 masterpiece Pulse. From online computers to cell phones, technology is ubiquitous throughout Kurosawa’s film, and slowly reveals itself to be the cause of a strange, growing phenomenon whereby Tokyo’s citizens begin to mysteriously disappear, often leaving behind only a residual black stain on the wall (shades of the marks found throughout post-atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It soon becomes clear that ghosts are attempting to enter the physical world through our gadgets, and Kurosawa’s portrait of a technology-fostered apocalypse is chilling not simply for its raft of indelibly unsettling imagery (a plane hurtling to the ground, shuffling specters spied on a computer monitor), but from its story’s underlying commentary about the alienation and loneliness fostered by our mounting reliance on machines. Modernity’s technological progress leads to communication breakdown, which in turn results in societal disintegration, a set of circumstances Kurosawa chillingly depicts as both unavoidable and irreversible. (NS)

VIDEODROME (1983)

The purifying/corrupting relationship between technology and the human body has long fascinated (and been fetishized by) David Cronenberg, a topic which he superbly addressed in 1983’s Videodrome. In this mind-bending story, the president of a low-rent television station, Max Renn (James Woods), stumbles upon transmissions of the titular S&M horror show – in which rape, torture and mutilation occur in a single orange room – and subsequently begins suffering from horrific hallucinations. From there, the line between real and unreal blurs, though regardless of whether or not the ensuing madness is all in Max’s head, the sight of him inserting organic videotapes into a stomach gash, which in turn produces a gun that melds with his hand, affords a twisted, terrifying view of man’s increasingly fundamental bond with his inanimate creations. “Long Live the New Flesh!” serves as both a rallying cry for the film’s “villains” and the mournful final words of Renn, with Cronenberg ambiguously treating our connection to television as something at once liberating and destructive. (NS)

SECONDS (1966)

John Frankenheimer's nightmare movie, shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe, begins with the chubby, perpetually middle-aged character actor John Randolph (Jack Nicholson's father in Prizzi's Honor) as a married banker who barely recognizes that his life has gone stale until someone is kind enough to point it out. He is recruited as a client by a mysterious, secret organization that arranges for people to be given second chances at life: first their bodies are remade through plastic surgery and an exercise regimen, then they are dropped into a new routine that has been planned for them by a computer program. Of course, they're still the same old dissatisfied dullards they were before they went under the knife, especially if, like Randolph, they're being played by Rock Hudson after the bandages come off. Most techno-phobic sci-fi films are about the dangers of technology that we don't yet have; this one is about what people could have been doing with technology that they already had when the movie came out, if only they were stupid and shameless enough. Which may be why it feels more accurately prophetic now than 2001. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two & Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: As "The Crow" Flies

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The good news is: Four Christmases is no longer the number one movie in America. (It slipped to the second spot with a $13.3 million weekend take.) The bad news is: it’s been replaced by The Day the Earth Stood Still. Do people know there’s a perfectly good version of this without Keanu Reeves available at their local video store? If they do, they don’t care, as Day scooped up $31 million of our Earth dollars. Twilight has hit the $150 million total mark; word is that Chris Weitz (American Pie) will take over as director of the sequel, New Moon.

Terminator Salvation is months away from hitting theaters, but a fifth installment in the series has already gotten the green light. Halcyon Co. execs “had originally planned to wait until the release of Terminator Salvation next summer before deciding on whether to proceed with the next chapter, but the positive studio, fan and media reaction to footage from the current pic has encouraged them to move forward ahead of schedule,” Variety reports.

Waiting for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen director Stephen Norrington’s big comeback? Looking forward to a reboot of The Crow series? In the unlikely event you’re a member of both groups, Variety has great news for you. “Stephen Norrington has signed on to write and direct a reinvention of The Crow, based on the comic created by James O’Barr.” Ca-caw! Ca-caw!

Related:
New "Terminator" Trilogy on Tap
Forget Christian Bale in Terminator 4, the Israeli Military's Working on T5

Screengrab Presents: The Best Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Of All Time (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:30:00 GMT

HENRY V (1989)

There’s been a lot of impressive speechifyin’ over the course of this past election year, and the Screengrab is currently accepting nominations for a Top Ten (or maybe even Twenty) of the greatest movie speeches of all time (to run in conjunction with Obama’s sure-to-be-classic inaugural oration)...yet, for my money, the tippy-top of any such list would have to include the classic St. Crispin’s Day pep talk from Shakespeare’s Henry V, wherein the titular monarch rallies the seemingly doomed, vastly outnumbered British army to give their lives gladly in the upcoming mother of all battles with France. Delivered by Kenneth Branagh (directing himself in a gripping action movie adaptation that makes you forget all about the pesky iambic pentameter stuff), the scene was so powerful on screen I wanted to rush right out and sack the concession stand. (And the rest of the movie ain't bad, neither.) Too bad the kind of talent (and ego) that allows a young firebrand like Branagh to helm and star in ambitious adaptations like Henry V and Hamlet tends to burn bright then quickly fade...at least, of late, from high-profile leading man movie roles (not to mention Emma Thompson’s heart).

ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)

As a cinematic object, there’s not much to recommend Animal Crackers. Its staging is stiff as a rail, its romantic subplot just sits there and dies, its musical numbers aren’t much to write home about, and it’s hardly on the cutting edge of big-screen audiovisuals, even by the standards of eighty years ago. But it does do one thing that forever cements it in the upper echelons of stage-to-screen adaptations: it introduces the Marx Brothers to the world. Animal Crackers was one of the brothers’ most successful Broadway shows, running for almost 200 performances with the same cast, so Paramount took a chance that the comedy stylings of Groucho, Chico and Harpo would translate easily from play to film. In a certain sense, they were wrong: a number of Groucho’s more salacious lines, which were big hits with sophisticated New York audiences, were judged too risqué by the Hays Code bosses and cut out of the film version. But in most other respects, the Marx Brothers proved even more popular in the world of cinema than they did on the stage in Manhattan. Even the most cerebral elements of their mile-a-minute comedy, like the metahumor qualities evident in Groucho’s asides to the camera and Chico’s famously copping to not being Italian (the only movie in which he does so), proved to be as beloved by the heartland, and even foreign audiences, as they were to their Broadway fans.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1988)

Stephen Frears made a risky choice when he helmed the first English-language adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ oft-filmed 18th-century novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. While most stage plays are opened up on film – made to look as non-theatrical as possible – Frears deliberately played up the staginess of the production. Instead of shying away from its origins as a play, he soaked it in theatrical elegance, and intentionally called attention to its artificiality. He couldn’t have picked a better play on which to attempt this tactic: Dangerous Liaisons, written in a high-nasty style that evokes the sadistic game-playing and one-upmanship of the courtier class of its day, is all about lies, about artifice, about theatrical chicanery. That’s why Frears and his screenwriter Christopher Hampton (updating his theatrical adaptation of the original novel for the screen) made such a wise choice; the world in which Glenn Close’s Marquise de Merteuil and John Malkovich’s Vicomte de Valmont lived was as unreal as a play, and that sensibility rightly pervades the entire movie. It also further provides us all the evidence we need that Keanu Reeves cannot act, and that Uma Thurman can – and is might purty to boot.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

Morning Deal Report: YouTube the Movie

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

“Producers Chris Adams and Steve Kearney are joining with producer-director RJ Cutler to create a feature documentary about a true-life love story that played out on YouTube.com,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “The film will follow the romance of teenage video blogger Daniel Meadows, an Austalian who fell in love with an American teen, Shannon Jones, online, where they documented their relationship.” If this is a success, we can look forward to Leave Britney Alone: The Motion Picture.

Keanu Reeves will strap on the sword and sandals for 47 Ronin. Wanted screenwriter Chris Morgan will pen the story “based on the true tale of a band of samurai swordsmen who avenged the death of their master in 18th century Japan," according to Variety. "The film will tell a stylized version of the story, mixing fantasy elements of the sort seen in The Lord of the Rings pics, with gritty battle scenes akin to those in films such as Gladiator.”

“Ben Affleck is in negotiations to follow up his directing debut, Gone Baby Gone, with the story of the death of Arizona journalist Don Bolles and the events it provoked,” THR reports. “In 1976, Bolles was a reporter for the Arizona Republic looking into political corruption and the convergence of New York, Chicago and Detroit mobsters in Phoenix. When lured to a downtown hotel by a source who didn't show up, Bolles was blown up in his car. He died days later.” Spoiler!

Related:
21 Stars We Hate
Ben Affleck on the Town

Take Five: Van Sant

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Gus Van Sant is certainly one of the most curious figures in contemporary American cinema. He pioneered a very specific breed of indie filmmaking before it even had a name, but his forays into mainstream cinema have alternated between clever successes and embarrassing failures. He gives some of the oddest interviews in Hollywood (compared to him, David Lynch is a downright pedestrian chit-chatter), and he's as dedicated to constant reinvention -- or at least refinement -- as anyone in the industry. And his career would seem downright schizophrenic if it weren't so marked by intensely personal qualities; he's done everything from big, Oscar-baiting biopics (such as Milk, his take on the rise and demise of openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk) to small, artsy, improvised tales with almost no commercial potential. He's equally capable of having his characters spout unadulterated Shakespeare and having them say nothing at all for endless minutes of screen time, and make both choices seem perfectly natural. He has a curiously critical eye towards his own work -- that is to say, it's not curious that he is self-critical, but rather it's curious how much he talks like a film critic; many of his longer discussions with journalists have sounded more like a well-informed film critic discussing Gus Van Sant's work than it does a director talking about himself. His stabs at mainstream credibility have yielded decidedly mixed results; his successes have been noteworthy (see below), but his failures, especially flattened-out duds like Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, and an utterly pointless remake of Psycho, have been spectacular. Through it all, he's remained one of the film industry's hardest men to figure out, but it seems no one ever tires of watching what his next move will be. Here's five of our favorites by the Prince of Portland.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

Mala Noche was the movie that made the underground sit up and take notice of Gus Van Sant's talent; Drugstore Cowboy won over the burgeoning indie world and made him a critic's darling. But the daring, explosively risky My Own Private Idaho was the movie that convinced me that I was seeing the work of an American genius in the making. The story of two sad, sincere male hustlers (played by River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves), it blended elements of Shakespearean drama, class warfare, transgressive queen cinema, and pure street poetry in a way that so clearly shouldn't have worked that it's downright amazing how well it did. Van Sant crammed the movie with real characters from his beloved Portland and made an intensely personal film that nonetheless hit everyone who saw it right where they lived.

TO DIE FOR (1995)

Gus Van Sant's first stab at commercial credibility was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which, despite a plethora of good intentions, was his first major dud. In fact, its ineptness in spite of itself might be noted as a pattern that the director would follow in much of his mainstream work, if it wasn't for the existence of his follow-up film, To Die For. Working from Buck Henry's sharpest, nastiest script in decades, Van Sant directs a movie that almost invisibly echoes some of the themes of his previous work, especially in those scenes featuring lovestruck, dimwitted local teen Joaquin Phoenix and his crew. Van Sant rarely overreaches, and manages to let the black comedic tone of the script do its work; his greatest accomplishment is to get a truly memorable performance out of Nicole Kidman, who's better here than she would be again for some time.

GERRY (2002)

In 2002, Van Sant was on the tail end of a bad time. Hollywood hadn't been good to him over the previous half-decade, but to be fair, he hadn't been very good to it, either, with Good Will Hunting, Psycho and Finding Forrester gunking up his resume. Returning to his strange interiors for another shot at indie filmmaking, he released the first of his "Death Trilogy", the underrated Gerry, and a lot of critics were ready to call it his fourth disaster in a row: it's static to the point of tedium, its improvised dialogue (by two actors not especially beloved by highbrow reviewers) was sometimes silly and sometimes impenetrable, and it had nothing resembling a plot. But Gerry was a quiet triumph, a movie that builds almost unnoticably and marks a return to greatness by a director who can do very much with very little.

ELEPHANT (2003)

Van Sant followed up the surprising and effective Gerry with the triumphant Elephant, the best film of 2003. The second of his death trilogy takes an almost transcendently naturalistic look at a small high school on the day of a Columbine-style murder spree; the dialogue, again largely improvised, and the endless, unintrusive tracking shots make Elephant a brilliant contradiction: a movie so banal that it's almost mystical. Through the whole event, from boring ordinariness to life-shattering violence, Van Sant's particular genius is to steadfastly refuse to lead the viewers to anything resembling an explanation for the horror. Forcing us to view everything from the eyes of those who don't understand why they have to die, Elephant reflects our own maddening desire to have random violence made explicable -- and the world's refusal to comply.

PARANOID PARK (2007)

A strangely stirring and deeply affecting film, 2007's Paranoid Park -- based largely on a successful young adult novel -- finds Gus Van Sant returning to Portland and making a key transition from the relentlessly bleak indie sensibilities of the Death Trilogy to the artsy mainstream appeal of Milk. Once again trusting an amateur cast (many of whom were recruited off of MySpace) and a good deal of improvised dialogue to carry the tone of the film, Van Sant also lays in a heavy, dark directorial touch that nails the mood of the story perfectly. He's greatly aided in this attempt by the gorgeous cinematography by Wong Kar-Wai's cameraman, Christopher Doyle, and the Zoo-York-clad Gabe Nevins as the affectless skateboarding protagonist. Paranoid Park is a perfect bridge between To Die For and Elephant.

Related Posts:

Screengrab Review: Milk

Gus Van Sant and Paranoid Park: 'It's the End of a Certain Way I Was Making Films'

Screengrab's Top Guilty Pleasures (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

SCOTT VON DOVIAK'S GUILTY PLEASURES:

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

If your weaknesses include pre-Star Wars sci-fi of the '70s and monkey movies, it really doesn't get any better than the Planet of the Apes series. I would classify the first Apes movie as a genuine classic, no guilt required. The same can't be said about the first sequel – at least, not by me and certainly not with a straight face. For one thing, star Charlton Heston only agreed to a few days of shooting, so he disappears a few minutes into the movie and is essentially replaced by James Franciscus as a newly arrived astronaut from the past. Franciscus appears to have been cast for his resemblance to Heston…that is, until late in the movie when you actually see both actors in the same shot and realize what a freakish-looking human being Charlton Heston really was. His performance may not be fondly remembered, but Franciscus did give us an immortal reading of the line, "My God! It's a city of…apes!" Beneath also offers Barney Miller's James "Inspector Luger" Gregory as a gorilla and Victor Buono as the leader of a race of underground mutants who worship an atomic bomb. Best of all, it has the most abruptly nihilistic ending of all time, as Charlton Heston attempts to put an end to the series by blowing up the planet. Fortunately for us Ape-heads, it didn't work.

O.C. AND STIGGS (1985)

This one is close to indefensible. I know Robert Altman loved all his children equally, but pundits like myself are supposed to be more discerning. Rationally, I know O.C. and Stiggs ranks with bottom tier Altman like Kansas City, HEALTH and the odious Pret-a-Porter, but for some ineffable reason I love it anyway. Goodness knows the leads (Daniel Jenkins as O.C., Neill Barry as Stiggs) are a uniquely uncharismatic pair – at times downright repellent, in fact. The plot is nonexistent even by Altman standards – two teenagers bum around suburban Arizona, torment their hated neighbor and conspire to bring King Sunny Ade to town for a concert. Yet there's something about the lazy summer vibe and tacky-tiki setting that sucks me in, something fundamentally amusing about applying the Altman filter to the John Hughes template, and even something geekily satisfying about the way Altman weaves in references to other movies, whether his own (the continuing campaign of Hal Philip Walker from Nashville) or others (Dennis Hopper reprising his Apocalypse Now role). If the filmography of Robert Altman is a vast palace of wonders, O.C. and Stiggs is the pink flamingo on the lawn. He wouldn't have it any other way.

POINT BREAK (1991)

I know the release date is 1991, but I like to think of Point Break as the last movie of the '80s. It's goofy and way over the top, but it doesn't get bogged down in CGI and fireballs and seizure-iffic editing – it's pre-Michael Bay action filmmaking at its most testosterone-poisoned, so naturally it could only have been directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The role of quarterback-turned-FBI agent Johnny Utah (Johnny Utah! Genius! The perfect genetic splicing of Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana!) fit Keanu Reeves like the wetsuit he often wears in the movie; if you were going to pick one agent to infiltrate a gang of surfers who rob banks while wearing Reagan and Nixon masks, it would be him. Of course, he needs a crazy partner with a fondness for meatball subs, which is where Gary Busey enters the picture. And he needs a worthy adversary to brah-mance, a golden god Zen master of surfing and bank robbery and all that is extreme in life – and who better for that role than the star of that cheesiest of all '80s action-fests, Road House? Point Break is basically a two-hour dick-measuring contest, which Reeves wins by jumping out of a plane without a parachute and using his sheer dudeness to fall faster than Patrick Swayze.

THE FAST & THE FURIOUS (2001)

Let me be clear: I speak only of the first of the fasts and the furiouses, not the 2 stinky 2 believe sequels. The 2001 original is a supercharged street racing thriller straight out of the old Roger Corman playbook. Ideally, it should be viewed not in an air-conditioned cineplex with stadium seating and THX sound, but at a hot, sticky drive-in with a case of cold beer on hand. The opening half hour offers up a bare-knuckle brawl, a drag race down a deserted city street, a high-speed police chase, a surprise attack by an Asian motorcycle gang, and finally a little down time at a house party where two gorgeous young women lock lips. It was at this point, I well recall, that someone in the audience behind me jumped up out of his seat and yelled "I love this movie!" to uproarious laughter and applause. It's that kind of picture. Sure, the lead is limp noodle Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez is at maximum glare-and-pout annoyance, but for once Vin Diesel is the right man in the right place. His name alone qualifies him as an astute casting decision, but his sleek chrome dome and rumbling voice seal the deal.

Click Here For More Guilt From Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs, Vadim Rizov & Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Contributor: Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

We’ve reached that part of the summer when Rainn Wilson comedies and films by Fred Durst are considered top new releases, so it must be time to look ahead to the fall. Traditionally this is the movie season for Oscar contenders and challenging indie fare, so let’s put away the robots and superhero tights and play a little 3 Up, 3 Down. (Feel free to weigh in with your own picks, my fellow Screengrabbers – if you dare.)

3 UP

1. Burn After Reading – No Country for Old Men was a return to form for the Coens, and we’re all happy they finally got their Oscars. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a pure shot of that Coen Brothers feeling. No Country was adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Ladykillers was a remake, and Intolerable Cruelty originated with other writers. Based on the trailer, Burn After Reading looks like a return to the inventive goofiness of The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou?, which puts it right in my wheelhouse.

2. The Road – Speaking of Cormac McCarthy, the second adaptation of his work in as many years in due in November. The grim post-apocalyptic tale is brought to the screen by John Hillcoat, director of The Proposition, a western that certainly counts McCarthy’s Blood Meridian among its influences. Viggo Mortenson has the lead, and the supporting cast includes Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garrett Dillahunt and The Wire’s Omar himself, Michael K. Williams.

3. Synecdoche, New York – Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut didn’t exactly wow most critics at Cannes, but the guy hasn’t let me down yet. (Well, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind didn’t really do it for me, but I’ll blame Sam Rockwell for that.) Even if it doesn’t really work, the premise – which has theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman building a replica of New York in a warehouse – should provide more of the Kauf’s trademark reality-bending weirdness.

3 DOWN

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still – Unnecessary remake of a sci-fi classic, with Keanu Reeves as an alien? The first time I saw this trailer, I thought it was a fake. The second time, I just said “No thanks.”

2. Twilight – I understand I’m not the target demographic for this “y.a.” phenomenon, but I still resent the fact that it’s in my face everywhere I go these days, and that’s only going to get worse as the release of this adaptation approaches.

3. The Women – This has got to be the uber-chick flick of the year: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Bette Midler and Debra Messing in a remake of the George Cukor classic. If I grow a vagina between now and when it comes out, maybe I’ll reconsider.

WILD CARD

Oliver Stone’s W. This can’t possibly be any good, can it? And yet I can’t wait to see it. We might be looking at a train wreck for the ages here.

Related:
Movie Magic: Making Pittsburgh Ugly Enough For "The Road"
Oliver Stone Finds His Dick

DVD Digest for August 19, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The seemingly endless run of crappy spring releases continues unabated this week, as I reach into last week to select a noteworthy release I somehow overlooked.

Belated DVD of the Week: With Criterion still digging into film history to bring cinephiles the best of classic cinema, it’s easy to overlook what’s going on at their kid-sister company, Eclipse. To wit: I was so caught up last week’s in Criterion’s impressive DVD of Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain that I completely forgot to mention the release of Eclipse Series 11: Larisa Shepitko. As with Eclipse’s previous box sets devoted to William Klein and Raymond Bernard, Eclipse has rescued a worthy if unsung filmmaker from semi-obscurity, this time by releasing two of her greatest achievements on DVD. This Shepitko set includes the war films Wings and The Ascent, two key films in her all-too-brief filmography, and which gives some insight of what a major director she might have become had she not died in a car accident at the age of forty. As with Shepitko’s husband Elem Klimov’s masterpiece Come and See, both films in this Eclipse set are hardly cheerful entertainment, but like Come and See they’re indispensible viewing, and I’m glad Eclipse has taken the care of releasing them.

Meanwhile, Criterion this week has new DVDs of Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room and Keisuke Kinoshita’s Twenty-Four Eyes. Also in classics coming to DVD: Oliver Stone’s Nixon: Election Year Edition (Disney, also Blu-Ray).

New releases coming to DVD this week include: Frances McDormand and Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (Universal); tween-bait Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3-D Concert (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Jay Roach’s funny/depressing HBO film Recount (Warner); yet another horror remake in Prom Night (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Keanu Reeves as a crooked cop in Street Kings (Fox, also Blu-Ray); and the grief-porny The Life Before Her Eyes (Magnolia). Also, two notable direct-to-DVD releases: My Sassy Girl (Fox), a remake of the Korean cult hit starring thespian extraordinaire Elisha Cuthbert; and mixed martial arts champ Randy Couture taking over for The Rock in The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (Universal, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s TV on DVD releases include: Dexter Season 2 (Paramount); Gossip Girl Season 1 (Warner); House Season 4 (MGM); Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1 (Warner). And in Blu-Ray only news, this week brings the release of Justice League Season 1 (Warner).

The Gay Pride Top Twenty (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

It’s Gay Pride Month, the 10th Annual Provincetown Film Festival kicks off this weekend and George “Mr. Sulu” Takei and Ellen DeGeneres are getting married (though not to each other, of course) in California (hooray California! And what’s taking you so long, New York and Vermont and Washington and Hawaii and Illinois and...y’know, all the rest of the country?)...

...so, anyway, to help celebrate, we here at the Screengrab thought it would be a good time to salute some of the highpoints in gay (and lesbian and bisexual and transgender) cinema with our very own rainbow collection of Queer Nation classics (not that there’s anything wrong with that)!

ANGELS IN AMERICA (2003)

"Hey, wait just a cotton-pickin' minute!" the purists among you may cry. “I thought this was a list of Gay Pride films, not TV shows!” Well, for starters, Mike Nichols’ all-star, six-hour, multiple Emmy and Golden Globe winning adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning rumination on homosexuality, homophobia and the better angels of human nature wasn’t TV...it was HBO. But more importantly, in a media landscape of generally low ambitions, lowered expectations and lowest common denominator multiplex landfill, it’s hard to ignore a six-hour celluloid phantasmagoria of staggering audacity, master class filmmaking, sharp dialogue, potent visuals, timely thematic resonance and knockout performances (including a multi-tasking Meryl Streep, future Weeds costars Justin Kirk and Mary-Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, Patrick Wilson, Emma Thompson, James Cromwell, Ben Shenkman and Al Pacino, using his late-career bluster to good effect as prototypical self-hating conservative closet case Roy Cohn). Sure, it gets a little silly sometimes, but who would've thought a movie about the AIDS pandemic (as depicted through intertwining tales of two infected men haunted by ghosts and other celestial messengers) would find time for so much humor, imagination and hope...and, as opposed to, say, a certain lengthy, operatic, sometimes silly (but Oscar-winning) big-screen multi-part epic about heroic bravery in the face of faceless evil, lethal apathy and looming death, the cultural and political battles depicted in Angels in America are no fantasy, and continue to rage on and on and on...

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001)

The most original film musical of the decade began as a drag act at Squeezebox!, a weekly gay performance event in mid-90s New York City. Performer and creator John Cameron Mitchell based his iconic character Hedwig on details from his own life: his childhood in East Berlin, his idenitification with queer rock stars, his struggles with being the gay son of a military general. The crux of Hedwig's character is both a fiction and a metaphorical truth: she is the victim of a botched sex change operation, leaving her a little bit male and a little bit female. Fueled by the anti-showtunes of Stephen Trask and Mitchell's gender-bending charisma, the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a glam-rock spirit quest: Hedwig begins as a self-loathing wannabe rock star looking to complete herself through sex, and by the end of the story, she is walking naked into the world, stripped of makeup and bitterness, finally learning to love herself. If that's not pride, then what is?

FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002)

Though he’d established himself since Poison, his first major feature, as the most talented director to come out of the so-called ‘New Queer Cinema’ movement of the 1990s, it wasn’t until Far From Heaven that Todd Haynes' talents were recognized by the mainstream media. His previous films had been too controversial, too oblique, too postmodern; but with this 1950s period piece, Haynes finally gained widespread acceptance and, with it, four Oscar nominations. Ironically for one of the most original filmmakers in Hollywood, the movie that gained him this recognition was a pure throwback. With its high melodrama, ginger treatment of interracial relations, and gorgeous color palette, it was unmistakably reminiscent of the films of the melodrama king of the fifties, Douglas Sirk; and with its highly stylized acting, uncomfortable emotional weight and unapologetic addressing of gay sexual desire, it likewise conjured the films of Sirk’s most famous devotee, Ranier Werner Fassbinder. In a way that blends the fantastic, romantic sensibilities of Sirk and the gritty, rich realism of Fassbinder – and with a freedom to frankly address issues of racism and homosexuality that were denied to them both – Haynes manages to make a film that’s both moving and incredibly frustrating. Always able to coax winning performances out of his actors, he also gets Dennis Quaid to deliver an exceptionally sensitive performance in a role where both understatement and overreaching could have been a disaster.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)

For obvious reasons, European cinema was several decades ahead of the curve when it came to addressing homosexuality (or, for that matter, any sexuality) on screen. It’s impossible to even conceive of an American film in 1985 – let alone one with the relative high profile of Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette – being as frank, and as frankly erotic, about a gay couple. Like Far From Heaven, it succeeded largely by not making its focus too narrow; the story of young Pakistani Omar and his white lover, a former skinhead played with verve by a young Daniel Day Lewis, is made especially lively and vital by placing it within the context of a broader story of the British immigrant experience at the peak of Thatcherism. Deftly blending issues of race, class, culture and economics with a star-crossed romance, My Beautiful Laundrette owes much to a top-shelf script by Hanif Kureishi; but what shouldn’t be overlooked is its intensely erotic scenes, which were among the first in mainstream film to illustrate that gay sex on the big screen could pack as much power as its heterosexual counterpart. Gordon Warnecke as Omar is a real find in his big screen debut, and Daniel Day Lewis, in only his third film, already shows signs of being the titanic actor he would eventually become.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

Gus van Sant has always specialized, at least in his personal films (that he finances with tripe like the Psycho remake and Good Will Hunting), in convincingly portraying the sad, proud lives of lowlifes, drifters and people with no real home to go to, whether by choice or by circumstance. He also has a particular talent for showing us characters who desperately need the love of someone, but who are none too wise in selecting who that someone should be. Those two themes come together with audacity and depth in My Own Private Idaho, the story of two hustlers – the poverty-stricken, vulnerable, narcoleptic Mike Waters (played by the late River Phoenix) and the slumming, proud, arrogant Scott Favor (played by Keanu Reeves who, God bless him, at least seems to be trying). For a movie so charged with homosexual love, it’s strangely lacking in sex, and not in the self-denying, passionless way that’s required from most gay characters on the big screen: rather, sex for the two of them is a largely joyless professional operation reserved for the making of money or the killing of time. This doesn’t mean they don’t need love, though, and therein lies the movie’s great tragedy: Mike wants the love of only Steve, and Steve wants the love of only his estranged, wealthy father. All of this plays out with an aesthetic derived not from Warhol’s cool surface gayness, or Fassbinder’s melodramatic near-camp: it’s given a thick sheen of the classics, drawing directly from Shakespeare. This can be both its damnation (several of the openly Shakespearian scenes come across as contrived and hokey) and its salvation (framing the entire struggle in the trappings of real tragedy gives it dramatic depth and resonance it might otherwise lack), but it’s a movie that certainly can’t be faulted for its ambition, and whatever its flaws, it’s a worthy step forward in the mainstreaming of gay characters in American cinema.

Click here for Part Two, Part Three and Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Gwynne Watkins, Leonard Pierce

Unfilmable: James Ellroy’s Hollywood Odyssey

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Dwight Garner once equated reading James Ellroy’s prose to “deciphering Morse code tapped out by a pair of barely sentient testicles.” Call me crazy, but that line has always stuck with me. The context of this vivid description was a review of the then-new movie adaptation of Ellroy’s novel L.A. Confidential. Ellroy and his publisher shared a good laugh when they sold those movie rights; they agreed that the book was essentially unfilmable.

“They were right, of course. And they were also wrong,” Scott Timberg writes in an L.A. Times profile of the hard-boiled crime writer and his filmography. “Only the most die-hard Ellroy fan resented that the film resembled his labyrinthine novel -- with its dozens of characters, thick historical context and overlapping subplots -- only slightly. It's considered one of the finest films of the '90s and one of the greatest film noirs since the genre's 1950s heyday. But since then, when it comes to movies, it's been more crying than laughing for Ellroy fans.”

Brian De Palma’s sodden take on The Black Dahlia was cause for much of that weeping, but there was also a little-known 1998 version of Brown’s Requiem starring Michael Rooker, and Ron Shelton’s so-so Dark Blue, based on an Ellroy story about police corruption in Los Angeles. Now Ellroy has taken his first shot at an original screenplay –Street Kings, another tale of L.A. cops gone bad. Opening this Friday, Kings stars Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker (recently seen treading this ground on The Shield), and according to Timberg, “its language, characters, sardonic morality and fast-reversing plot feel like an Ellroy novel.”

Ellroy isn’t talking, at least not to Timberg. (He’s been seen rubbing elbows with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies of late, talking up some golden oldies of L.A. noir.) Meanwhile, Joe Carnahan is still trying to get his adaptation of White Jazz off the ground, but finding it an uphill battle. Given the unholy mess that was Smokin’ Aces, that may not be a bad thing.

Le Bon Temps Roule!

Phil Nugent — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It's Fat Tuesday, which marks the noisy, beer-stained conclusion to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Sadly, most of you who visit this site are trapped at your jobs or classrooms right now, and while we could address ourselves exclusively to those now celebrating in the Pelican State, most of them are probably too drunk to read. We'll just settle for mentally sending them some love rays and hope those in the French Quarter remember that as soon as the clock turns to twelve tonight, those nice policemen on horseback whose job it is to clear the streets will start unsheathing their billy clubs. For the rest of you, we'll just remind you that there have been a number of motion pictures that tried to tap into the mysterious beauty and happy vibe of the city that care forgot. Most of these movies stank like week-old gumbo, but here's a few that might make for an enjoyable carnival day rental:

PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)

This thriller starts out on the New Orleans docks, where a tough named Blackie (played by a hulking, gaunt-featured newcomer to movies billed as "Walter Jack Palance") murders a guy who's fresh off the boat who looks as if he's only got about five minutes to live anyway. When the coroner confirms that the dead man was suffering from pneumonic plague, Richard Widmark (as a U.S. Public Health officer) and a cop played by Paul Douglas have to track down Palance, his whimpering sidekick Zero Mostel, and anyone else who may have been in contact with him, while keeping things quiet so as to prevent a panic. The director, Elia Kazan, who a year later would make one of the great movies set in New Orleans when he transferred Tennesee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire to film, shot this movie in actual New Orleans locations, which means that, in addition to its virtues as a crackerjack entertainment — which are considerable — it also has the fascination of serving as a semi-documentary record of the city as it was more than half a century ago. Fun fact: shortly after directing Mostel in this picture, Kazan testified against him in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, thus helping to get the actor blacklisted.

HARD TIMES (1975)

This period piece, set during the Depression, was the first film directed by its screenwriter, Walter Hill. It's a vehicle for Charles Bronson, in what is almost certainly the best movie and probably the best performance of his '70s period as a top-billed international star; he plays a soft-spoken drifter who falls in with a gambler (James Coburn) and begins competing in bare-knuckle fistfights that are thrown together to give the locals something to bet on. You get a sense of what the leisurely pace of life does to you in New Orleans from this film: for an action movie, it has a unusually slow tempo, as if Hill were a little drunk on the atmosphere and needed to take care to remember to keep putting his next foot in front of the other in the right order. But it's so flavorful and lovingly crafted that it's never boring. Strother Martin, who wears a white suit and a moustache that make him look more than ever like Tennessee Williams's Mini-Me, plays Coburn's sidekick, who tends Bronson's wounds; he explains his unlicensed medical status by saying that "in the fourth year of my studies, a small black cloud appeared on the campus. I departed under it." (The young Becky Allen, a mainstay of New Orleans theater for many years, has a small, good appearance as his dinner date.)

Eighteen years later, another talented action director, John Woo, would come to New Orleans to shoot his first American film, Hard Target, starring Jean-Claude Damme (as "Chance Boudreaux"), who stumbles across an operation, led by Lance Henriksen, to organize The Most Dangerous Game-style hunts of displaced homeless men on the streets of the city. At one point, Henriksen tells someone that "it's no accident we're in New Orleans... There's always some unhappy corner of the globe where we can ply our trade." So I guess the filmmakers deserve some kind of credit for not sucking up to the local Tourist Board. Oddly enough, this was not the first movie that tried to account for Van Damme's Belgian accent by insisting that his character was supposed to be a Cajun.

THE BIG EASY (1986)

This fast-talking crime movie is one that New Orleans itself has always had a love-hate relationship with. It's a cartoon of the city's image, complete with crooked cops, weird accents (the hero, a detective played by Dennis Quaid, is meant to be Cajun-Irish), and such lines as, "Who do I look like, the Grand Marshall of the Mardi Gras?" But on its own endearingly unambitious terms, it's often a fun cartoon, with a memorable little turn-on of a bedroom scene between Quaid and Ellen Barkin (who, when Quaid sticks his hand up her skirt, unrolls her smile as if she'd been wondering all her life what was in there), and funny turns by Lisa Jane Persky, Grace Zabriskie, and local icon John Goodman. There's even a brief appearance (as an inexplicably surly magnet salesman) by Peter Gabb, who starred in a Tulane University production of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves in which this writer played a nun, a performance hailed by one critic as having been "worth trying, I guess." This movie is especially worth seeing for Charles Ludlam's appearance as Quaid's lawyer, identified at one point as "da man dat got da governor acquitted." Ludlam, the founder of New York's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, was a god in his own specialized field of high-camp, Pop Art theatrical farce, but he didn't leave behind much on film, and by the time The Big Easy opened, he had died of AIDS. Though Ludlam was a Yankee, his joyously broad, eye-rolling cameo specifically captures the kind of fun that blossoms in New Orleans like few things I've ever seen.

TUNE IN TOMORROW... (1990)

This one's really freaky, and definitely a matter of taste. Fans of hardcore silliness will find a lot in it to like. Even its bloodlines are surreal: the screenplay, by the British novelist William Boyd (An Ice Cream War; A Good Man in Africa), is based on Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which was set in Lima, Peru in the 1950s, but with the action shifted to New Orleans in the same period. It was directed by Jon Amiel, a British TV and movie director who was then fairly hot after coming off the Dennis Potter-scripted miniseries The Singing Detective, and who was on his way, after this film came out, to never being fairly hot again. It stars Peter Falk as "Pedro Carmichael", a radio soap-opera writer who takes a creatorly interest in the forbidden romance developing between hot-blooded man-child Keanu Reeves and the ripe, womanly Barbara Hershey. The movie, which really takes off in the sections where Pedro's radio show fantasies are acted out by a group of actors that includes Peter Gallagher, Elizabeth McGovern, Dan Hedaya (in an eyepatch), Hope Lange, Buck Henry, and local embarrassment John Larroquette, also features a terrific original score by Wynton Marsalis, who can be seen performing with his band in a nightclub sequence. If you ever get the chance, give it a shot: it sure won't remind you of much else that you've seen before.

That Guy!: Udo Kier

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:15:00 GMT

After months of doing this feature, we started to wonder: are we being Europhobic? Are our America-centric viewing habits getting the best of us? Are countless Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians snubbing our film blog because of our unwillingness to feature beloved character actors from the Continent in That Guy!? Well, that ends today. For today we feature, as the lead singer of Korn gracefully put it, "the man with the fucked-up eyes": Mr. Udo Kier. Wherever he goes, Udo (as is befitting a man named Udo) is a candidate for the strangest man in the country. He has played a vampire or a zombie at least a dozen times, and he is likely the only actor in the history of the world to have appeared in films by Gus van Sant, Ranier Werner Fassbinder, Lars von Trier, Andy Warhol, and Rob Zombie. Resembling nothing so much as a Helmut Newton photograph come to some semblance of three-dimensional life, Udo Kier -- who was born in Germany and almost died hours later when Allied bombers pulverized the hospital in which he was born -- cannot rightly be called a character actor so much as he can a cult actor. Whether he's going to be a leader or a member of that cult depends on the role. Truth be told, Udo isn't even one of the finer actors we've featured in this space; his presence in a film isn't so much a promise of a gripping performance to come as it is a dire warning that something very, very fucked up is about to happen. He's appeared in a staggering number of films -- as many as 150 at last count -- and it is putting it extremely mildly to say that they range greatly in quality. He was in Berlin Alexanderplatz; he was also in Spermula, a movie that we assure you we are not making up. He was in Dogville; he was also in Barb Wire. He has worked with some of the most talented American and European directors of the last half-century; he also put on a spanking costume and posed in Madonna's "Sex" book, and smeared fresh animal offal over his face at the behest of Paul Morrisey. What will he do next? Believe us when we say that a man who has been directed by both Quentin Tarantino and Uwe Boll within the last year is capable of anything.

Where to see Udo Kier at his best:

ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA (1974)

Nowadays, Udo's reputation as an actor hinges largely on showing up on set and, when someone points a camera at him, very quietly acting like a creepy weirdo who manages to freak you out just by standing there. Back in his early days, though, it hinged on getting in front of the camera and acting like a complete and utter lunatic, as he does in this campy, ridiculous, so-bad-it's-horrible Paul Morrissey production (the only thing Andy Warhol did for the movie was write a check). Listen to him intone "The blood of these whores is killing me!" and you'll begin to understand why Udo Kier, in the first of his many vampire roles, is a very odd person.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

As he often does when left to his own devices, Udo, like some sort of exotic species of spider crawling across your dinner plate, practically steals the show out from under such powerhouse hitters as River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves by doing little more than showing up. In Gus van Sant's daring modern-day quasi-Shakespearean drama of narcoleptic hustlers, Udo turns up essentially playing himself, a Euro-trash hustler who tools around town with his eyes bugging out and making bizarre things happen. Udo doesn't even really have to act here: he just appears on screen and the whole audience starts having a spasm.

SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE (2000)

Udo Kier, as previously mentioned, has spent an awful lot of time portraying vampires, for reasons known only to himself and probably best kept that way. In Elias Merhige's inventive retelling of the filming of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, Kier goes against type and actually plays off of the undead rather than playing them. Seeming to conjure up a bizarre mix of Renfield and Gollum with a hefty dose of nitrous poppers thrown in for an extra frisson, Udo actually manages in a minor role to throw in some acting chops the likes of which we hadn't seen since Europa, just to prove he could do it.

Long Live the New Flesh!: Top 12 Real Bodily Transformations on Film, Part 2

Peter Smith — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:00:00 GMT

RENEE ZELLWEGER in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY (2001) and BRIDGET JONES: EDGE OF REASON (2004)

Was it 20 pounds she gained? Was it 30? Sure, it's one thing when a guy decides to pack on some extra weight for a role, but when Zellweger decided to beef up to play the title role as Helen Fielding's zaftig, romantically-challenged heroine — on two separate occasions, no less — you'd have though from the reaction that her sacrifice was the cinematic equivalent of Ronnie Lott cutting off the tip of a finger to play in a football game. Her rounder figure — along with a surprisingly decent British accent — helped make Zellweger more convincing in the role, but here's the depressing reality: even at somewhere between 140 and 150 pounds, she wasn't exactly outside the normal, healthy body weight for a woman of her size and frame. No wonder the character is so screwed up.

KEANU REEVES in LITTLE BUDDHA (1993)

Don't laugh. Seriously. The idea of Keanu playing Siddhartha in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic about the life of the Buddha has fueled many a one-liner (though let it be noted that since then the actor has played a rather surprising number of Chosen Ones, so obviously Bertolucci was on to something). Perhaps it was in anticipation of such skepticism that Reeves went all-out for the role, actually choosing to not eat for a lengthy period of time to better recreate the image of Siddhartha after his momentous fast. Indeed, if more people had seen the movie, they might have garnered more respect for the young actor. You thought this dude was thin before? Check him out here.

SYLVESTER STALLONE in COP LAND (1996)

When an actor feels pressured to live up to his own image (forty-eight vials of human growth hormone, anyone?), is it surprising that the public was so resistant to seeing him at less the perfect physical condition? With his legacy as Rocky and Rambo firmly (get it, firmly) established, movie goers expected "Sylvester Stallone" + "cop" to equal "muscles" + "action." Stallone gained forty pounds (mmm, IHOP…) and accepted SAG minimum to play the role of the shy, gentle, hearing-impaired cop Freddy, but the public just wouldn't embrace him that way. Even a cast rounded out by De Niro, Keitel, and Liotta — and pumped up by a Miramax hype machine which had just recently become fully operational — couldn't force the film into viewer's hearts. It was a risk Stallone needed to take as an actor, but with five kids, a wife, and a magazine launch to support, he ultimately returned to his free weights and the franchises that made his fame and fortune.

PETER O'TOOLE in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

In Nicolas Wapshott's snippy biography of the legendary Peter O'Toole, the author claims that producer Sam Spiegel and director David Lean pressured the actor into getting a rhinoplasty to narrow his nose, in order to more closely resemble his character in Lawrence of Arabia. While it's indisputable from photographic evidence that O'Toole did indeed get some work done on his booze-reddened honker around this time, it was likely his own decision — even leaving aside the fact that it's an awful lot to ask of someone to get elective surgery to play a single role, how dedicated to verisimilitude could Lean and Spiegel have possibly been? After all, O'Toole, at nearly 6'3", was a full ten inches taller than the diminutive T.E Lawrence, but it's not very likely that David Lean asked his leading man to get his shins lopped off for the role. Still, as physical transformations go, it might not have been the most dramatic, but its occurrence in such a big movie with such a big star is noteworthy, coming only a few years after Charlton Heston was being sponged down with bodypaint to play a Mexican in Touch of Evil. Goodness knows what they would have asked of Marlon Brando if he'd gotten the part; Anthony Perkins, who was also considered, probably would have required a full Adam's apple transplant.

GEORGE CLOONEY in SYRIANA (2004)

New York Times reviewer Manohla Dargis once wrote that, by roping Brad Pitt into the Danny Ocean movies, George Clooney relieved himself of "of the burden of being the most beautiful man in the room." It is a burden that Clooney has happily relieved himself of whenever possible. In the ensemble-cast political drama Syriana, which he co-produced, Clooney plays one of those intelligence experts who knows more than anybody else about what's going on in the Middle East but cannot get any of the higher-ups to listen to him because his gruff manner and realistic views harsh their buzz. To play the part, he let his beard grow out and gained just enough weight to take himself out of the "Hell-lo, gorgeous!" league. The change gives him an air of authentic-seeming physical discomfort, which pays off brilliantly in the scene where he fluffs a job interview and the in the image of him, shirtless and barefoot, regaining consciousness on a bathroom floor after torture: he looks painfully vulnerable but too pathetic to bother killing off. The experience seems to have served him well; in the current Michael Clayton, in which he plays a big law firm's unloved, overmortgaged fixer, he shows that he can now play the overqualified loser role without the physical baggage.

MARLON BRANDO in THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON (1956) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

In his blazing youth, Marlon Brando sometimes made very odd decisions in his choice of roles, but even when all the odds were stacked against him, he always brought total commitment to the train-wreck site. When John Patrick's once-loved, painfully whimsical play was brought to the screen, Brando insisted on playing the Japanese interpreter Sakini, a narrator figure who keeps talking to the audience and dispensing cutesy aphorisms in a mincing fake-Asian dialect. Brando's seriousness of purpose is evident in his starved appearance: he went on a crash diet and whittled himself down alarmingly for the part so that Glenn Ford and the others playing American military men could loom over him appropriately. He doesn't give a terrible performance—he does a number of clever things, and he keeps his energy level amazingly high, considering that he must have felt like passing out every time he walked past the catering area — but after the viewer recovers from the initial shock, he may wonder why Brando thought this material was worth the sacrifice. Twenty years later, Brando had reason to feel that he had nothing left to prove, and to prove that, he used the set of Apocalypse Now to unveil the mountainous physical condition that we know think of as Late Brando. The actor would later go on to do some remarkable things in that condition, but he was still self-conscious about his weight gain and hadn't yet mastered his new body as an actor. Having single-handedly scuttled Francis Ford Coppola's original conception of Colonel Kurtz as a man so divorced from physical pleasure that he was a gaunt, haggard, living ghost, he balked at the director's attempt to reconceive the role as a bloated, belching voluptuary. In the end, all Coppola could do with him was let him babble whatever came into his head while shooting him concealed in shadows and hope for the best. We will long argue about the lessons of Marlon Brando's career, but this much seems clear enough: whether he was giving it his all or just watching the clock while waiting for his paycheck to clear, he didn't get to be Marlon Brando by doing anything half-way.

CHRISTIAN BALE in THE MACHINIST (2004)

Brad Anderson's psychological thriller aims for a surreal, nightmarish feel in its story about an insomniac repressing a terrible secret, but nothing in Anderson's bag of visual tricks is as disturbing as the appearance of its star: to convey the effects of stress and sleeplessness on his character, Bale lost more than sixty pounds over the course of four months, taking his weight down to 120 pounds. Reportedly he wanted to go down to a neat one-hundred pounds, but Anderson talked him out of it. Thank God he did; with his facial features sunken and gnarled, the skin tightly fitted around his skeletal structure, Bale looks like something you could cut your hand on. If the way he looks were the product of some special make-up technique, it might be awe-inspiring, but knowing that it's really his body both makes and undermines the movie. He's the creepiest thing in it, yet you're too worried that he could keel over at any minute to concentrate on the story.

HONORABLE MENTION:

MELANIE GRIFFITH in THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (1990)

Some physical transformations have proven worth it; some, not so much. Some have been valuable investments of time on the parts of the actors, who have used a change in their bodies as part of their creative process; some have verged on neurotic acts of self-mutilation. But Melanie Griffith's attempt to go above and beyond the call of duty on The Bonfire of the Vanities is in a category all its own: it's mainly notable for the way the actress, who at the time was a fifteen-year veteran of Hollywood moviemaking at age thirty-three, seems to have gotten her personal and professional calendars mixed up. Playing a gazillionaire's tarty mistress, a role that required her to appear in a succession of low-cut gowns, Griffith decided that it would be a good idea to get breast enhancement surgery during a break from shooting, when half her scenes were in the can and she still had more to shoot. According to Julie Salomon's indispensable book The Devil's Candy, the movie's director, Brian De Palma, was notified of the big change in his leading lady when she returned to the set and sat in his lap; she beamed at him and waited for a compliment on her new chassis while the crew goggled and he tried to smile while wondering how he was going to match shots. Oddly, Griffith continues to show a disatisfaction with what God and Tippi Hedren gave her that some might say borders on rank ingratitude; she recently did her part to get the TV series Viva Laughlin pulled off the air by scaring the viewers with her new lips, which look as if they were drawn by Max Fleischer.

– Pazit Cahlon, Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Scott Renshaw

Morning Deal Report: Boooooooooring

Peter Smith — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Jennifer Connolly has joined the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. But what they really need is Alex Winter as Gort.

Meanwhile, a remake of High Noon is in the works.

Guy Pearce may be replacing Viggo Mortensen in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Woo. What a slow news day! Get back to work, you freeloaders — I need more remake announcements!

— Peter Smith

Take Five: Movies With Lyrics

Peter Smith — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Danish director Susanne Bier’s new film, Things We Lost in the Fire, is already generating a tremendous amount of indie hype. If the buzz manages to survive this opening weekend, it may result in the words "Oscar" and "Halle Berry" being mentioned without the words "fluke" or "Catwoman" appearing in the same sentence. The quiet family drama’s name may seem pretty arcane to people who aren’t as into indie rock as they are indie film – the title is drawn from an outstanding 2001 album by Duluth slowcore band Low. As more and more directors who grew up on a diet of punk, alternative and indie rock start making films, we’re likely to see more such abstractions; but while we wait for a generation raised on post-hardcore to grow up, here’s a few films from the past with musical names.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (1968)

Filmed simultaneously with the Rolling Stones' recording of the song of the same name – indeed, footage of the Stones putting down tracks for the single are featured in the film – this was one of the first movies to use a rock song as its title. Jean-Luc Godard’s documentary/agitprop/drama/black comedy/whatever is a typically brilliant, typically frustrating film, very much in keeping with his work of the era. And, like the song, the film seems to be nothing so much as an admission that the end of the Sixties were a chaotic, turbulent vortex that owed as much to the hand of Satan as they did the peace-and-love generation.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

Gus Van Sant’s disorienting, dazzling, neo-Shakespearian drama about the lives of two gay hustlers (Keanu Reeves and the late River Phoenix) was a major step forward in the director’s postmodernist sensibility. Crammed with classical allusions, stunt casting, surrealism and shattered (or at least badly bruised) fourth walls, its determination to blend the sophisticated and the trashy was an appropriate tribute to the junk-culture leanings of the B-52s. "Private Idaho", a track off their 1980 sophomore effort Wild Planet, lent the movie its name more than a decade later. It’s a pretty good match, too – try dancing to the song’s frenetic rhythms during some of the movie’s more depressing moments.

THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD (1995)

Unfairly slammed as a third-rate Tarantino knockoff for no better reason than its unfortunately timed release date, this intricate, too-clever-for-its-own-good heist thriller from director Gary Fleder is really more of a second-rate film noir that somehow got made fifty years too late. Still, maybe it deserved some of the bad reputation that got it lost among a raft of hip, violent thrillers – while it drew its name from an evocative, hilarious song off of the late Warren Zevon’s 1991 album Learning to Flinch, the filmmakers (no doubt aware that you can’t copyright a title, even one as distinctive as this) neither sought not received Zevon’s permission in using the name.

BOYS DON’T CRY (1999)

The movie that put Hilary Swank (and, to a lesser degree, Chloe Sevigny) on the map was also the first major Hollywood release to treat transgender people as anything but a punch line. The story of Brandon Teena, who lived most of his life as a male before being beaten to death by friends after they discovered he was biologically female, set the tone for a spate of indie films about homosexuality and gender issues. Its deeply ironic name was drawn from a 1980 single by the Cure, taken from their debut album of the same name, but the version featured in the movie itself is a far inferior cover. Seek out the original, one of the strongest the band put out before becoming a self-caricature.

MAN ON THE MOON (1999)

It’s no coincidence that Milos Forman’s biopic of experimental comedian Andy Kaufman drew its name from the 1992 R.E.M. song of the same name (from their Automatic for the People album). The song is itself a worshipful tribute to the comic, featuring references to his most famous routines and a chorus where singer Michael Stipe imitates Kaufman imitating Elvis. What’s more interesting is that this may be one of the few times where the video for the original song is far superior to the movie the song inspired – the inventive Peter Care-directed video is much more memorable than the somewhat stodgy and predictable film by Forman.

— Leonard Pierce