The Screengrab : meg ryan

In Search of a Midnight Reality Check: New Year's Eve at the Movies

Phil Nugent — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Hey, happy New Year, everybody, but Josh Rosenblatt ain't having it. Rosenblatt has noticed that our attitudes towards important events in our lives tend to be colored by a template for how those events should look based on similar events they've seen in movies. "Even at my father's memorial service, I couldn't help thinking about Vito Corleone's funeral scene in The Godfather, wondering how ours looked by comparison. (Not too badly, as it turns out. A little light on gangsters and a little heavy on rabbis, but otherwise a perfect, totally depressing scene.)" And as he sees it, New Year's Eve is "when Hollywood really cranks up the fantasy quotient and goes out of its way to create the most unreasonable expectations for what a quality holiday experience – and, by extension, what a quality life – should be. New Year's movies play almost like advertisements: You too can fall madly in love with the perfect girl and commemorate the occasion with a 20-minute dance number set to a Gershwin score, like Gene Kelly in An American in Paris! You too can be blessed with economic and creative freedom at the stroke of midnight, like Tim Robbins in The Hudsucker Proxy! You too can find yourself in the middle of the perfect, fleeting romantic moment just by posting a request on the Internet, like Scoot McNairy in In Search of a Midnight Kiss! It's fantasy after fantasy, cultivating in our minds the most absurd notions of what is and isn't possible, of what we should and shouldn't expect from ourselves, on this one arbitrary night of the year."

Rosenblatt breaks "the most pernicious, ridiculous, self-defeating myths in our collective unconscious" associated with New Year's Eve down into a handful of categories. There's "the Myth of the 11th-Hour Conversion", as typified by the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Billy Crystal hies off to tell Meg Ryan that she's the one for him before the year ends, thus promoting "the happy delusion that love conquers all – space, time, disagreement, detachment, disaffection, disillusionment, late-Eighties hairdos, even karaoke – and that the love realized just as one year is turning into another is a love that will last forever. But in reality, what this movie shows us is that loneliness on New Year's Eve makes people do things they probably shouldn't." There's also "the Myth of Secular Redemption." Consider About a Boy, in which Hugh Grant lets Rachel Weisz think he's actually the father of his young chum Marcus so that she'll mistake him for a man of substance. "When Rachel finds out the truth, she dumps him, of course, precipitating an existential collapse that leads Will to the realization that without people to love, life is a spiritual vacuum. The Myth of Secular Redemption assures us that no one is beyond saving – that even the worst among us are capable of great acts of decency, especially when they fall in love on New Year's Eve. What a delightful moral for such a deviant movie to end with. Problem is, that isn't really the moral of the movie. The practiced cynical eye can see what the sad message of About a Boy really is: Lying is the perfect way to start a relationship.

Finally, there's the Myth of the Better You, as seen in The Apartment, in which Shirley MacLaine, the girl who's been screwing Jack Lemmon's mean, powerful prick of a boss (Fred MacMurray) who's been using Lemmon's apartment as his adulterous love nest, finds out, on New Year's Eve, that Lemmon has told MacMurray to take a flying leap and quit his job. She rushes to Lemmon's side, "and they play a game of bridge. Beautiful, right? The perfect New Year's movie? Love triumphs over cynicism; the nice guy gets the girl; our heroes become the most decent versions of themselves? Well, the sad truth about The Apartment is enough to make a grown film critic cry, so jaded is it in its view of human nature: She's going to cheat on him. No doubt about it. 'Shut up, and deal,' will soon sound like a thousand daggers" in Lemmon's heart. "Here's the thing," Rosenblatt writes. "Hollywood consistently paints New Year's Eve as a night of redemption, hope, and possibility, when in reality it's almost invariably a night of dashed expectations, disappointment, and anxiety." Believe me, I'm convinced. Now I just wish I could turn this guy loose on Forrest Gump.

DVD (Mini-)Digest for December 23, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Christmas is just two days away, and for you last-minute shoppers, the studios are unloading several of their late summer and early fall releases to fill out an otherwise slow DVD week.

The most notable of the bunch is Burn After Reading (Universal, also Blu-Ray), the Coen brothers’ follow-up to the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. Much more comedic than its feted predecessor, Burn has a no less bleak view of human nature. Consequently, despite the many laughs the film has to offer, the film is much more disquieting upon reflection than one might guess while watching it. But even if you’re just in the mood for entertainment, you should still be able to relish the game performances, especially those given by Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt’s unspeakable hair, and the priceless double act of J.K. Simmons and David (Sledge Hammer!) Rasche.

This week’s other releases include Anna Faris doing what she does best in The House Bunny (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and friends in The Women (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Steve Coogan taking comic aim at both Shakespeare and the alleged sexiness of Jesus in Hamlet 2 (Universal); and the fashionably unhinged Julianne Moore in Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace (Weinstein).

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

That Guy!: Dan Hedaya

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

You know, folks, it's really not my intention for this feature to just go through a list of everyone who's ever worked with the Coen Brothers or appeared in Buckaroo Banzai, but that's the way it seems to be shaking down. Some people just share my appreciation of freaky-looking middle-aged guys who behave eccentrically, I suppose. Anyway, Dan Hedaya's first movie role was in Myra Breckenridge, but don't hold that against him: not only did he go one to have a beloved television career, most prominently as the dull-witted Nick Tortelli on Cheers, but he's also appeared in nearly a hundred movies, usually as some variety of dolt or sleazebag. 1999 saw him combine the two, playing doltish sleazebag Richard M. Nixon in Dick and fulfilling a sort of physical destiny: with his weighty jowls, shifty eyes, and perpetual five-o'-clock shadow, he's a near spitting image of the Tricky One. Born to a family of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, Hedaya taught junior high school science for a number of years before his acting career took off; his shuffling demeanor and absent-minded craziness is certainly reminiscient of more than a few science teachers we can remember from our own school years. Outside of television, the role which Hedaya made the biggest impact was that of Alicia Silverstone's wealthy father in Clueless; he also stole the show in the overblown, overpriced movie version of The Addams Family as Gomez's crooked, shiftless attorney, Tully Alford. Recently, as he closes out his sixties, he's specialized in playing the fathers of characters as eccentric as he is: he was Amy Sedaris' dad in the big-screen adaptation of Strangers with Candy, the patriarch of the Butabi Brothers in the dismal SNL spin-off A Night at the the Roxbury, and the father of the obsessive-compulsive detective played by Tony Shalhoub in Monk. His recent appearance in the controversial TV series The Book of Daniel shows that he won't stop shuffling into strange roles anytime soon.

Where to see Dan Hedaya at his best:

BLOOD SIMPLE (1984)

In their motion picture debut, Joel and Ethan Coen were already showing their deft touch with character actors, casting Dan Hedaya as Julian Marty, the possessive, sleazy strip club owner who stands between John Getz and Frances McDormand. Hedaya gets a rare opportunity to show off his capacity to express rage during his final confontation with Getz, and goes on to become the most persistent murder victim since Paul Meurisse in Diabolique. But all told, it's just one of the earliest examples of his long line of questionable scumbags, a man so dodgy that even ethics-deprived private dick M. Emmet Walsh finds him "disgustin'".

JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO (1990)

John Patrick Shanley was one of Hollywood's hottest properties, coming off of a big hit with Moonstruck, when he made this rather strange little number, a suicidal romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan looking as uncomfortable as ever. But Dan Hedaya almost single-handedly salvages the movie with a brief but mercilessly hilarious cameo near the start of the film as the hapless, hopeless Hanks' boss. He vanishes from the movie early on and never has much impact on the plot, but he gets some of the greatest comic dialogue of any film of the year: "I know he can get the job. But can he do the job? I'm not arguing that with you!"

MUHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)

We have it on good authority that when David Lynch approached Dan Hedaya about appearing as enigmatic movie producer Vincenzo Castigliane in Mulholland Drive, he asked him: "Dan, we know you can do eccentric. We know you can do sleazy. We know you can even do creepy. But can you do completely bugshit insane?" (He can get the job, but can he do the job?) It turns out he can, and we were all rewarded with another small but scene-stealing performance in this perplexing surrealist masterpiece from a guy who knows good character actors almost as well as the Coens.