The Screengrab : mickey rourke

Reviews By Request: Angel Heart (1987, Alan Parker)

Paul Clark — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

As always, voting for my next Reviews By Request column can be found at the end of this review.

The conventional wisdom regarding cinematic plot twists is that they be unexpected. This means that either the audience shouldn’t see that a twist is coming, or that they shouldn’t anticipate the particular twist that the movie has in store. So what to make of a movie like Angel Heart? Here is a movie that more or less announces from the beginning that nothing is what it seems, and the film is filled with clues that are somewhat less than subtle. Yet at the same time, it’s entertaining and stylish enough that it entertained me even as I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I more or less guessed where it was headed, but I had a good time getting there.

Consider an early scene in the film, in which the detective protagonist Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) meets his mysterious retainer Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) to discuss the case Harry has been investigating. In most detective movies, Cyphre would be portrayed in a way that makes him seem slightly off, but wouldn’t hint at his dark secrets. But rather than trying to hide Cyphre’s true nature, director Alan Parker almost dares us to guess, as he tempts Harry by offering him $5,000 to take the case (a pretty good sum for a fifties-era gumshoe), then uses his elegant long nails to peel one of the hard-boiled eggs on his plate. Angel knows something is afoot, but he’s so anxious (both by Cyphre and the eggs, since he’s “got a thing about chickens”), and in thrall to the money being offered that he doesn’t even try to guess what. But it becomes pretty clear to the audience who Cyphre really is by the time he mentions that eggs are seen by some cultures as symbols of the soul then takes a big bite from one of his eggs, a sinister glare in his eye. It’s almost like… Parker wants us to guess.

Really, the whole movie is like this. And while as a mystery Angel Heart leaves something to be desired, it’s much more successful as an exercise in lurid style. Parker, who first worked as a commercial director, has always been more comfortable with visuals than with substantial narratives, which torpedoed serious efforts like Angela’s Ashes and The Life of David Gale, but was well-suited to more stylized and less plot-driven fare like Pink Floyd: The Wall (Evita straddled the line, making mincemeat of plot and character development but providing thrilling, almost Riefenstahl-esque lighting and choreography for the production numbers). Angel Heart fits into the second category, which goes a long way toward explaining why this is one of the director’s more interesting films.

If Parker doesn’t seem especially interested in making a whodunit, that’s because they’re largely a setup for the story’s seamier trappings- the dingy home of a morphine-addicted doctor, the shadowy back alleys of old New Orleans, the ornate choreography of a late-night pagan ritual. Likewise, Parker’s use of blood makes the movie feel almost like an old-school giallo in parts, complete with leering closeups of freshly disembodied corpses and the various organs that were removed in the process. And the notorious sex scene between Rourke and Lisa Bonet is one of the more memorable of Parker’s career, so frenzied and over the top that it must be seen to be believed. That the scene in its current form was actually edited down so that the film was get an R rating just goes to show how far Parker was willing to go to get his effects.

However, the movie would be nothing more than empty style without the assured lead performance by Rourke. Even prior to his nineties career meltdown, Rourke excelled at playing down-and-out guys who thought they were smarter and more charming than they actually were, and the role of Harry Angel was a perfect fit. While many actors would have turned Harry into a retro-cool archetype, Rourke’s performance is eccentric (look at the way he reacts whenever he spies a chicken) and emphasizes his deep-seated anxieties and preoccupations. Rourke isn’t afraid to highlight Harry’s less capable side- for a detective he can sometimes be pretty slow to pick up on things, and he occasionally makes some pretty big mistakes out of carelessness. Yet he’s so engaging in his rumpled, careworn way that it’s hard not to like the guy, and to feel sorry for him once the story has painted him into a corner.

In the climactic scene of Angel Heart, Rourke faces off against DeNiro for the final time, as Harry finds out not only Louis Cyphre’s secret but also his own. DeNiro was still in the full flower of his talent at the time, not yet having become a bloated parody of himself. But it’s Rourke who shines in this scene, as he cries out “I know who I am!” again and again. As the scene continues, Rourke wrings one emotion after another from this line- first defiant, then pathetic, then resigned- and it’s a reminder of what a fine actor he was back before we nearly lost him to his own self-destructive impulses. When I saw The Wrestler this past winter, I knew that it was designed to be Rourke’s comeback vehicle, but I had only a limited exposure to the early years of his career. Now that I’ve seen Angel Heart, I’m eager to see more.

For my final Reviews By Request column here at Screengrab, I’d like to pay tribute to one of the Screengrab’s favorite sites, The Onion A.V. Club. One of the A.V. Club’s most interesting regular columns is The New Cult Canon, a weekly feature written by the talented Scott Tobias. Every week, Scott takes on a fairly recent cult-friendly movie, and he was gracious enough to recommend five of his favorite New Cult Canon selections for this column. Which of the following should I review next?

Online Surveys & Market Research

In case you’re having trouble reading the poll, the choices are: Bitter Moon (Polanski), I Am Cuba (Kalatozov), King of New York (Ferrara), Married to the Mob (Demme), and Millennium Actress (Kon). And remember, the comments section is open. See you in two weeks!

In Other Blogs: Roger Ebert Contemplates Eternity

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

The weekend is almost here, so let’s turn to our old pal Roger Ebert for some cheery TGIF thoughts. “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris. I don't expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing…I hope not. I have plans.”

Glenn Kenny brings reason to rejoice at Some Came Running: The Friends of Eddie Coyle is finally due out on DVD – in a Criterion edition, no less. “‘Young film fans raised in the multiplex era might look back and lament the fact that no one is making movies like The Friends of Eddie Coyle anymore,’ Kent Jones writes in his exemplary (as usual) essay on the 1973 film, included in the new Criterion DVD of it. ‘The truth is that they never did. There's only this one.’ Robert Mitchum's performance as Eddie, the hangdog, hard-luck crook whose quiet desperation—in this story, he's due to start serving some time in a couple of weeks, and he's just not going to be able to hack it—compels his every move, is a huge part of the film's uniqueness. He underplays like nobody's business, and never announces himself. Not only does the trademark Mitchum smirk never once cross his face—looking at his work here, you'd never believe he had it in the first place.”

At PopMatters, Kit MacFarlane reconsiders Mickey Rourke in Homeboy. “A glum and downbeat boxing film, Homeboy not only anticipates many of the key concerns of the highly-celebrated The Wrestler, but also, by now-obvious extension, the real life trajectory of Rourke himself. But the film fell into the ‘too depressing’ pit on its release, and the presence of standard genre cliches saw it treated dismissively by those who didn’t look close enough to see those same cliches being quietly, but firmly, derailed. Despite the presence of actors like Christopher Walken and Jon Polito, a delicate score by Eric Clapton, and even a fawning reference in Bob Dylan’s Chronicles ("The movie traveled to the moon every time [Rourke] came onto the screen. Nobody could hold a candle to him."), it is rarely mentioned today at all…Too depressing in 1988, Homeboy‘s aura of sorrow now seems too delicate, too nuanced and poetic, next to the sensationalized sledgehammer misery pioneered by today’s hip angst-peddlers like Aronofsky, Todd Solondz, Larry Clark, and Christopher Nolan.”

SmartMoney lists 10 Things Movie Critics Won't Tell You. We’re fond of #7: You probably don’t want to hear this, but you need me. “Want to stir people up? Ask them what they think of movie critics. Jen Davis of Louisville, Ky., is put off by what she sees as a superiority syndrome in the profession. ‘My opinion is just as valid, dammit!’ she says. Tammy Ras of Pascoag, R.I., is more militant: ‘If they say, “Don’t see it, it sucks,” that means, “Go see it, it’s great.”’ Sounds harsh, but the truth is, filmgoers need reviewers. As Salon.com’s Zacharek puts it, ‘Critics are the only thing standing between consumers and advertising.’ With hundreds of films released in theaters each year, ‘Critics are more important now than they ever were,’ she says. ‘There are just so many movies, so much aggressive hype.’”

Finally, it’s not exactly a blog, but The Worst Show on the Web is Blog Talk Radio, and more importantly, the most recent episode features your Screengrabbin’ pals Andrew Osborne and yours truly discussing some films screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival, most notably (and contentiously) My Suicide. Give it a listen here.

DVD Digest for April 21, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

As the summer movie season approaches, the studios unleash their first wave of DVDs that tie in with the upcoming blockbusters. However, this week also sees the release of one of the most intriguing DVDs so far this year.

Heading this week’s slate of recent releases is Darren Aronofsky’s working-class sports saga The Wrestler (Fox, also Blu-Ray), featuring the towering performance of Oscar-nominated comeback kid Mickey Rourke, as well as the Best Picture nominee Frost/Nixon (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with its televised tête-à-tête between Michael Sheen’s celebrity reporter and Frank Langella’s Tricky Dick. Also this week: the Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the acclaimed documentary A Jihad for Love (First Run).

As far as I can see there’s only one major classics release this week, but it’s a doozy- Criterion’s Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé. Featuring nearly two dozen works from the famed French scientist/filmmaker, this box set also features an original score by Yo La Tengo that accompanies eight of the films, as well as extensive interview footage with Painlevé from the French TV series Jean Painlevé Through His Films. Much has been made in the past of Criterion’s ongoing efforts to release the canonical classics of world cinema in worthy DVD editions, but no less noble is their commitment to honoring more esoteric fare like this, which might not otherwise have gotten released on DVD. I only hope that enough people will pick up this DVD that Criterion will be encouraged to release more like it in the future.

In TV on DVD news, this week sees the release of Caprica (Universal), the prequel to the acclaimed Sci-Fi Network series Battlestar Galactica, and the pilot episode for an upcoming series of the same name.

This week’s most in-demand Blu-Ray only release is the X-Men Trilogy (Fox), which is hitting shelves in advance of the big-screen spinoff entry X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Each of the films is also available separately, if you’d prefer. A comic book movie of a somewhat different stripe is also arriving on Blu-Ray today- Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (Disney), which includes both theatrical and “extended” versions, along with plenty of special features. Other Blu-Ray only releases include Charlie Sheen in The Arrival (Lionsgate), and, just in time for Earth Day, the nature doc Arctic Tale (Disney).

Finally, our Synopsis of the Week- a feature which, by rights, ought to be re-titled Anime Synopsis of the Week- is actually a twofer this week, coming as it does from the ADV Films two-pack of Puni Puni Poemi and Kekko Kamen. Here’s the synopsis:

”Aliens annihilate Poemi Watanabe's parents in PUNI PUNI POEMI, so she goes on a revenge program that includes S&M, humongous robots, and the mysterious properties of dead fish. Poemi becomes a superhero in the process, but all she wanted was to be a professional voice actress!”

OK, I guess I get the ways S&M and humongous robots must be related to a plot like this, but the whole “dead fish” plot point sounds so bizarre that it’s one of those things that can only seems to turn up in Japanese animation. Also, I sure do hope that Poemi becomes the superhero voice actress she’s always dreamed of being! Moving on:

”In KEKKO KAMEN, a busty supervixen puts up a losing battle against stripping down to her bare essentials as a parade of creeps-- ranging from a principal to a camera-wielding samurai-- successfully remove her wardrobe.”

Compared to its companion in the DVD set, it doesn’t sound like this one has much of a plot. In fact, if not for the synopsis revealing that the creeps “successfully remove” the heroine’s wardrobe, there would be almost no story to speak of. I do, however, like that the protagonist is a “busty supervixen”, since as any Russ Meyer fan can tell you, that’s the best kind of supervixen.

Morning Deal Report: The Passion of the Rourke

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

He’s never going away, folks. Mickey Rourke has signed on to yet another project, this one called Passion Plays. “Mitch Glazer will write and direct the indie tale, the logline of which is being kept under wraps,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Glazer is the screenwriter behind the Al Pacino CIA saga The Recruit and the Bill Murray holiday comedy Scrooged.”

Danny De Vito is bringing the Crazy Eddie story to the big screen. De Vito will direct the biopic of Eddie Antar, founder of the electronics chain, Variety reports. After “losing control of his company in a hostile takeover, Antar went on the lam after the new owners uncovered his financial shenanigans and the SEC charged him with stock fraud.” By the way, if you remember the TV ads for Crazy Eddie’s – “His prices are in-SAAANE!!” – that’s not Antar. It’s an actor. Another illusion shattered.

Here’s a remake we never thought we’d see – X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has signed to update the original Ray Milland thriller. If you’ve somehow forgotten, it’s the story of a “scientist who is near a breakthrough in X-ray vision technology when his funding is cut off. Desperate to show results, the doc applies eye drops that eventually cause him to lose control over his growing powers.”

Related:
Mickey Rourke's Whiplash
Coming Soon: 55 Remakes!

Unwatchable #45: “Another 9½ Weeks”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

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

Now that the Mickey Rourke comeback arc is complete – with our redeemed hero falling just short of the ultimate prize, a Best Actor Oscar – what better time to look back at one of the movies that made a comeback necessary in the first place? By 1997, Rourke’s star had already fallen far enough for him to reprise his role as wealthy investor John Grey in a straight-to-video sequel to 9 ½ Weeks (after he’d already reteamed with Weeks director/sleazemeister Adrian Lyne for the quasi-sequel Wild Orchid). The halcyon days of Johnny Handsome and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man were but a distant memory.

In 1997, Kim Basinger was starring in L.A. Confidential, for which she won an Oscar. Clearly her priorities did not including returning for another romp in the sheets with Rourke, especially since she apparently didn’t have all that much fun the first time around. So the plot of Another 9 ½ Weeks becomes Grey’s search for his erstwhile playmate Elizabeth McGraw, which leads him into the treacherous arms of her former friend, fashion designer Lea Calot. Lea is played by supermodel Angie Everhart. You may have noticed that nobody ever refers to her as superactress Angie Everhart. There is a good reason for this, and plenty of evidence in support of this reason is provided in Another 9 ½ Weeks.

We know John Grey is in a bad place as the movie begins because he’s playing Russian roulette in a darkened room. If the chamber had only spun a little further, Another 9 ½ Weeks would have ended at the three-minute mark, but alas, fate spares John and he must struggle on. He hires a blonde, leggy hooker to go through the motions with him, but that’s not good enough, so it’s off to Paris to track down his lost love and win her back.

At an auction of Elizabeth’s artwork, John places the winning bid on all of her paintings, yet even this gesture is not enough to make her materialize before him. His efforts do attract the attention of the aforementioned Lea, who leads him on with tantalizing hints about Elizabeth’s whereabouts. Lea has read Elizabeth’s diary of her affair with John, conveniently titled 9 ½ Weeks, so she knows all his tricks and catchphrases and is eager to experience them firsthand. This leads us into the true test of any erotic thriller worth its rental price: How ludicrous/icky/unintentionally hilarious are the sex scenes?

Let’s see…first there’s Lea’s reverse strip-tease, in which she slowly dons a business suit while John struggles to remain conscious on the bed. (In his defense, it does look like an awfully comfy bed.) Then there’s a brief interlude at a party where women are kissing other women and one half-naked beauty has hot candle wax dripped all over her body. (I’ll pause here while you vigorously masturbate.) After blindfolding John, Lea and her lovely assistant Claire (Agathe de la Fontaine) do a hot bump ‘n grind routine, which is especially enjoyable for him because he’s fucking blindfolded! Eventually John gets around to re-enacting his greatest hits from the first movie, such as covering Lea in rose petals and dumping wine and honey all over her naked writhing body.

Finally comes the big reveal, courtesy of Lea’s pompous Eurotrash business partner: Elizabeth is dead! She became a junkie and OD’d! Which only raises more questions, like…John couldn’t find this out on his own? This isn’t public knowledge? He has enough money to buy her entire collection of paintings, but he can’t hire a PI to find her clearly marked tombstone? I’d say he’s not such a bright guy, but then again, he’s the one who got to drizzle honey all over a naked Angie Everhart – and wouldn’t it be nice to think that was his plan all along?

Previously on Unwatchable:
46. 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain
47. Creepshow 3
48. Cool as Ice
49. Laserblast
50. Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The Best:

THE SPECIALS (2000)

Okay, I’ll admit, this one might be cheating since there’s never really been a Specials comic book...but there’s no question Craig Mazin’s criminally underseen comedy is, indeed, a comic book classic. The film (starring national treasure Thomas Haden Church as The Strobe, Judy Greer as best-Goth-girlfriend-ever Deadly Girl and Rob Lowe’s finest hour and a half as The Weevil) hit theaters for about five minutes in L.A. before sinking into undeserved obscurity, and I only saw it because The New Times and the L.A. Weekly raved about it. They were both right for once, and so now I'm spreading the love in case you ever spot this in a video store (or trust me enough to add it to your Netflix queue). The premise is similar to Mystery Men (if, as one IMDb commenter quipped, Mystery Men had been directed by Eric Rohmer) -- i.e., an ensemble comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes -- but The Specials is less a genre parody than a look at the group dynamics of co-workers who only HAPPEN to be superheroes (although for most of the movie, they could just as easily be doctors, musicians or real estate salesmen). Kitchen-sink indie filmmaking at its best, the movie features sharp, funny dialogue, about 90 seconds of special effects and a terrible coming attractions trailer that makes it look like a “wacky” Hollywood yuk-fest instead of the endearingly goofy gem that it really is...which is why I included the (admittedly censored) scene above instead.

SIN CITY (2005)

All green screens and no sets make Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City a deliriously hyper-stylized cinematic interpretation of Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel series. Generating virtually every non-human element of his film noir with a computer, Rodriguez creates an adaptation nearly identical, in visual terms, to its source material. Fidelity, however, only gets one so far. And what makes the sumptuously black-and-white Sin City truly thrum with grungy, brutal life is not only its all-star cast’s fittingly outrageous, archetypes-on-mescaline performances (notably those by Rosario Dawson and Benicio Del Toro) and Rodriguez’s expert reproduction of Miller’s hand-drawn comic panels, but the director’s approximation of the brisk movement implied by those illustrations. Rodriguez brings Miller’s images to life with dynamic verve, a feat almost as thrilling as the performance of Mickey Rourke as battle-scarred tough guy Marv, a granite bulldozer whom the actor – even under pounds of facial prosthetics – embodies with a burning-red heart and soul.

BLADE 2 (2002)

After several stuttering attempts to follow DC in leasing its characters to the big screen, Marvel Comics had its first real success with the 1998 Blade, a horror-action hybrid based on one of the lesser supporting characters from its back pages: Blade, the African-American vampire hunter who himself possesses the advantages of vampirism (super strength, extended lifespan) and none of the disadvantages (can withstand sunlight, is not Eurotrashy), was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula during the blaxploitation movie era. (Artist Gene Colan based his look partly on that of Jim Brown.) The first Blade movie, directed by Stephen Norrington (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and written by David S. Goyer, was unapologetic cheeseball fun, with a choice selection of bits from the comic and energetic, unhinged performances by Wesley Snipes in the title role and Stephen Dorff at his man-you-love-to-hate best as the villainous Deacon Frost. The sequel, though, is real gourmet trash, with the sensationally gifted director Guillermo del Toro brought in to take Goyer's nonsense about warring vampire tribes, give it a high polish, and set it all to a thumping hip-hop-meets-electronica score. The result is one of the most improbably gorgeous mindless thrill rides of the last several years, though the franchise keepers erred badly in permitting Goyer to not only write but direct the subsequent Blade Trinity, which plowed into a wall with all hands lost.

HELLBOY (2004)

Coming off Blade 2, Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to get himself an annuity by taking over the Harry Potter franchise in favor of hatching a movie around writer-artist Mike Mignola's unlikely hero -- a gargoyle-shaped paranormal investigator with a back story related to World War II who operates in an environment that calls up memories of H. P. Lovecraft's squishy horror fantasies. Del Toro captures the look and feel of Hellboy's world to a degree that marks the film as clearly a labor of love, and Ron Perlman, who plays the title character, reaches through the layers of makeup to give the enterprise some soul. He's more skittishly adolescent than the gruff loner of the comics, which pays off major comic dividends in the scenes involving the poor red bastard's crush on a moody firestarter played by Selma Blair: she'd make King Kong look down and shuffle his feet awkwardly.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Though often dismissed as merely an early, cheesy vehicle for then-fledgling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius’ swords-and-sandals saga Conan the Barbarian is pure mythic pulp, its epic action and fantasy proving faithful to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s violent legends. Milius’ macho persona forcefully informs this testosterone-laced Conan tale, in which an orphaned child becomes a slave, then becomes a warrior, and then finally a king, a path paved with equal measures of bloodshed, sly humor and pseudo-profound pronouncements about honor and glory. Still something of an amateurish actor, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger is nonetheless an ideal Conan, and despite the proceedings’ one-dimensionality, the director’s majestic widescreen compositions lend the film a striking classicism. It’s the opening centerpiece, however, that’s truly unforgettable, in which Milius’ camera lingers, for what seems like an eternity, on the cold, motionless face of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) just before the evil warlord beheads Conan’s mother in front of the lad’s eyes.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Schwarzenegger to Make Cameo Appearance in New Stallone Movie; Old Action Rivals to Bury Freakishly Large, Bursting-Veined Hatchet

Phil Nugent — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:30:00 GMT

When Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was running for governor of California in the wake of the disappointed reaction to the third Terminator movie, a lot of people were quick to make the obvious joke that turning to politics might be a good career move for him; running a state the size of California had to be easier for a guy who was then in his mid-fifties than trying to continue holding up his end in the action-icon game. In fact, his last movie appearance before taking office was a cameo at the start of 2003's The Rundown, in which he seemed to be graciously passing the baton to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The news that Schwarzenegger has agreed to do another cameo, as himself, in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, should probably not be taken as a sign how just bad things have gotten for those who are supposed to be holding the reins out West. The Gov contributed a cameo to the 2004 Around the World in 80 Days, directed by Frank Coraci, a movie that was seen by approximately one-hundred thousandth of the number of people who recently saw Coraci and his leading man, Steve Coogan, making cruel sport of Joaquin Phoenix and Christian Bale. And he can also be seen, briefly and as himself, in a forthcoming Indian film, Kambakkht Ishq, which has an inside-Hollywood story and includes a cameo by...Sylvester Stallone.

Personally, we applaud the Governor's efforts to help cover the school budget by taking part time jobs. It's not as if he could sign up for a shift at Mickey D's--there's no way they make those hats big enough that head. And while some might worry that a state leader should not put his dignity in peril, in Schwarzenegger's case, that ship probably sailed somewhere around the time of Hercules in New York. (When you're making your movie debut alongside Arnold Stang, and you're the one whose voice they decide to redub, dignity is not a product that you're ever going to be asked to endorse.) Still, for those of us who remember the '80s, it's a little funny to see him doing Stallone a favor, and even funnier to see Stallone asking him for one. I don't suppose they were ever Spider-man and Doc Ock in the heated-feuds department, but from at least the mid-80s, when Schwarzenegger began to overtake Stallone in the steroid-idol sweepstakes just when Sly had impressed himself mightily by proving, with the success of Rambo, that he had it in him to embody more than one franchise meathead character with a five-letter name beginning with "R", there's always been an undercurrent of competitive tension between them, made all the more savory by Stallone's spectacular job at failing to hold up his end. One critic detected a "fear of Schwarzenegger" theme running through many of Stallone's mid-80s films--not just Rambo but also Rocky IV and Cobra--in which he was roughed up but not bested by huge, muscleheaded figures who often came with scary accents. Stallone even tried to duplicate Schwarzenegger's career-expanding success in turning to comedy, but while it not for us to say that Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot did not compare to Twins or Kindergarten Cop in the laugh riot department, they didn't do nearly as well at the box office. But the fact remains that last year's Rambo, and its predecessor, Rocky XXXVII, did a lot better than a great many thoughtful observers--feel free to take that as a synonym for "me"--expected them to. That means that Stallone has had two geriatric hits while Arnold has been off running some dumb ol' state. If Schwarzenegger misses his old job, being on the set of The Expendables should make him feel right at home: in addition to Stallone, who's also on board as writer-director, the cast includes Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and Roberts's new P.R. man, Mickey Rourke, making the set a virtual watering hole for has-beens and comeback kids. It's been reported that Schwarzenegger has been preparing for his cameo by telling people that Stallone is "a a terrific director and writer, and a great actor." If he's really been doing that, without crossing his eyes to keep a straight face, he's both a master politician and a better actor than we remember.

Screengrab's Ultimate Exploitation Films!!!!!!! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:00:00 GMT

SPUN (2002)

If not for the evidence of the YouTube clip above, I’d be willing to believe I simply hallucinated this sleazy little movie during a hot, sleepless night in the San Fernando Valley. For example, all during the recent Awards Season, I kept hearing about Mickey Rourke’s years in the wilderness when he couldn’t find work as an actor...and yet, there he is in 2002, playing crystal meth guru The Cook alongside slumming Young Hollywood types like Jason Schwartzman and Mena Suvari (as well as Debbie Harry and Eric Roberts, who apparently did something really terrible fifteen years ago). Not that this icky, hyper-pixilated film (which, according to my pal Wikipedia, holds the Guiness Record for most edits in a full-length motion picture) would have served as much of a heartwarming comeback vehicle for anyone involved. Every character is vile, from Schwartzman’s strung-out tweaker who keeps a naked stripper (played by a very brave or very masochistic actress named Chloe Hunter, who also played the naked stomach on the American Beauty poster...thanks again, Wikipedia!) chained spread-eagle on his bed for most of the movie...to Suvari, who method acts explosive diarrhea...to Patrick Fugit, sporting really, really gross acne...to an even more spastic than usual John Leguizamo, who seems to be jerking off vigorously into a sock in the aforementioned YouTube clip (though, thankfully, I don’t really have any vivid memories of that particular plot development). Which is not to say Spun is a bad movie, exactly...at least not in the sense of being poorly made. It's just bad.

SHOWGIRLS (1995)

It’s a testament to the eternal power of this truly bewildering big-budget sexploitation potboiler that even today, a lot of critics simply can’t figure out what to make of it. Oh, it’s not good – in fact, it’s insanely, jaw-droppingly bad. But how much of that badness is by design? After all, the director, Paul Verhoeven, is a talented filmmaker who has certainly suckered us in the past, delivering sly satire on American culture disguised as blockbuster entertainment in movies like Robocop and Starship Troopers. Then again, the writer is Joe Eszterhas, who has penned a lot of shitty movies like this with no apparent irony. The story of a cheap tramp who comes to Las Vegas in a quest to determine exactly how cheap and trampy she is willing to become, Showgirls features scenes that are so horrible that they can’t possibly be serious, but which are played so seriously that there’s no way they’re a joke. What to make of the scene where Nomi (played by Elizabeth Berkley, who goes the entire movie without ever exhibiting a single recognizably human behavior) angrily eats French fries and vomits in a parking lot out of sheer rage? What to make of the scene where she has sex with a floppy-haired, floppy-souled MacLachlan as if she’s trying to banish him to another dimension? What to make of the scene where she and Gina Gershon, who has clearly sized the whole movie up as a no-win situation, debate the merits of brown rice and vegetables? If Showgirls was made by a bunch of nobodies on a shoestring budget, it would at least be comprehensible, but the fact that it was made by Hollywood heavy hitters for a king’s ransom can only leave you wondering if it’s some kind of insanely good parody of a terrible movie, or something so mind-peelingly bad that it goes, like Nietzsche, beyond good and evil.

SHAOLIN MASTER KILLER (1978)

Also known as Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The Master Killer, and about a half-dozen other titles, this is the movie that made a huge star out of Hong Kong kung fu actor Gordon Liu, and led indirectly to the founding of the Wu-Tang Clan. (If you can, pick up the DVD version released by the Weinstein’s Dragon Dynasty company, with astonishingly geeky audio commentary by the RZA!) Before anyone started taking wushu movies seriously, they were generally meant to be exploitative grindhouse fare for urban audiences, as evidenced by their former moniker, “chop-socky flicks”. But Shaolin Master Killer was one of the first wave of post-Bruce Lee wushu epics that started to tip off critics that maybe there was something genuinely worthwhile happening in these punch-‘em-ups. The plot couldn’t be simpler: during the oppressive Manchu dynasty, a young man enters the Shaolin temple to learn kung fu, and, after passing the grueling training exercises required of a monk, uses his martial arts expertise to pursue the secular goal of freeing his people from tyranny. But even with the thin plot, there’s some great acting going on (Shaolin Master Killer features appearances by some of the greatest Hong Kong character actors of the day), and, of course, lots of the most exciting fight scenes ever put on film. You can tell what you’re in for before the movie even starts: its opening credits feature one of the most thrilling sequences in the history of wushu cinema, with the charismatic and emotional Liu performing exciting moves as the soundtrack blares, of all things, a bit of incidental music from the score to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

For some four decades, the writer-producer-director Larry Cohen has been a never-ending Roman candle of feverish activity, spitting out one punchy, high-concept idea for horror, sci-fi, and action movies and TV series after another and dressing them up with political conceits and crackpot notions that might have been filched from pamphlets found in a Greyhound men's room. His efforts are consistently undermined by low budgets, sloppy execution, and his own sledgehammer touch, but at least he's given us a filmography that can make you wonder what it might look like if its maker had been blessed with resources and talent. This bizarre take on the end-of-the-world religious-horror theme that the big studios were mining with big-budget junk like The Omen is perhaps his most tantalizing project, which means that it's the one that is most plaintively calling out to be remade by somebody who could really do justice to its sick, sick heart. People without past histories of violent criminal behavior are suddenly flipping out all over New York City, committing murders and signing off with the explanation, "God told me to." (One of the killers is a cop played by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut.) The paranoid set-up is juicy and disturbing enough to give you the willies even without Cohen's climactic twist, which basically suggests that Jesus was the product of rape by an extraterrestrial.

IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, there was a subterranean wave of so-called “Christploitation” movies coming out of the American south – cheaply made, often gory and tawdry tales of sensationalist sin, usually with more than a bit of Apocalyptic flavor. A number of these made their way to the Southern Baptist church of my youth, and by far the most demented of these was If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?. Directed by Christploitation superstar Ron Ormond and based on a sermon by the wonderfully named Rev. Estus W. Pirkle, a Tim Kazurinsky lookalike who appears in the film reading in his hysterical hillbilly squeak, the movie posits itself as a dire warning. If America does not undergo a massive church revival in the next few years, Pirkle bleats, it will surely signal the beginning of an invasion by Communist forces that will spell the end of Christianity as we know it. That’s only the beginning: as a fallen churchwoman overacts madly in the pews, Pirkle and Ormond paint a woozy picture of the nightmarish future America under Soviet rule. People are forced to stomp all over a glossy portrait of Jesus! Those who do not renounce their faith are beheaded, machinegunned, or forced to have bamboo rods jammed into their ears until they vomit! Schoolchildren will be compelled to pray to Fidel Castro for free candy! Featuring a no-star cast of locals from Pirkle’s church portraying badly dressed commisars, and a Communist invasion force so ill-equipped that they drive their victims around in a beat-up old pickup truck, If Footmen Tire You is really something to behold. To 11-year-old me, it was terrifying; to anyone grown up enough to see it for what it is, it’s utterly laughable.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four & Six...and don't say we didn't warn you!!!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Screengrab's Ultimate Exploitation Films!!!!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing quality, award-winning cinema during the past few weeks of Award Season mania, but now that Hugh Jackman has doffed his top hat and tails and the Slumdog kids have shuffled back to Bollywood, we thought it would be as good a time as any to get back to all the SEX-CRAZED!!!! BLOOD-THIRSTY!!!! ULTRA-PSYCHOTIC!!!! movies we really like, from the gin-soaked swamps and drive-ins of hixploitation to the blaxploitation grindhouse and...BEYOND!!!!

And sure, if you think about it, pretty much everything Hollywood pumps out is some form of exploitation, from the straight-up blood and guts of the zillionth Friday the 13th remake to the pity party relationship-porn of He’s Just Not That Into You. Even this year’s Oscar nominees were baited with pulp: after all, Mickey Rourke’s face in The Wrestler was at least as freaky as anything in Freaks, and where would The Reader be without all the hot Nazi sex and Kate Winslet’s big pepperoni nipples?

But the movies on this week’s list go even faster, pussycat...not to mention further, deeper, weirder and wilder. They did it first or they did it best or maybe they really shouldn’t have done it at all. Can your heart stand the shocking facts as Screengrab salutes THE ULTIMATE EXPLOITATION FILMS-A-GO-GO?!!!!??!?!!!

MARIHUANA (1936)

1930s films such as Marihuana (whose poster bore the subtitle "Weed with Roots in Hell"), Cocaine Fiends, Assassin of Youth and Reefer Madness tended to come with introductions explaining that their lurid tales of young people driven to crime, madness, and death by indulgence in vile narcotics were being presented to the public for "educational purposes only." These things were later revived in the 1970s and turned into midnight movies for hip audiences who enjoyed laughing at the dim old things who didn't know that a little weed could just be harmless fun. In fact, the '70s audiences may have been more naive than those in the '30s, most of whom probably understood perfectly well that putting up with some fake moralizing was the price they had to pay for the wild-child melodramatics, which were so extreme that they could only be justified dramatically with the pretext that these characters were carried away by the kind of bad chemicals that had Hunter S. Thompson seeing drunken lizards in the lounge of his Las Vegas hotel. Truth be told, you have to be a little desperate for cheap thrills to really watch most of these things; despite all the wild and crazy goings-on, the slow, stagy filmmaking isn't exactly psychedelic. Reefer Madness is probably the most famous of them, but the 57-minute Marihuana makes that 67-minute epic seem downright poky by comparison. Its answer to Reefer Madness' famous piano-playing scene is a party scene where a girl takes a toke on one of "the funniest-looking cigarettes I've ever seen" and is soon laughing into the camera with an expression that would alarm the Joker. Soon she and her gal pals, one of whom looks like an unchaperoned young Margaret Dumont, are stripping off their clothes and running into the ocean, with the result that one of them drowns and another gets pregnant. (Ask your mother.) After that, it's a short path to dealings with smiling men in dubious mustaches, chases through alleyways against trigger-happy cops with very poor aim, and the once-innocent heroine's steady transformation into Lady Scarface.

DOLEMITE (1975)

Excuse me: that’s DOLEMITE, motherfucker! The world lost a singular talent last year when Rudy Ray Moore, the incredibly foul-mouthed stand-up comic and “King of the Party Records”, left Earth for the big Player’s Ball in the sky. In the blaxploitative 1970s, he made a handful of movies based on his bad-ass pimp persona, but none of them were as enjoyable or as crazily over-the-top as Dolemite. Made for half a buck and some chicken wings in 1975 and starring Moore and a cast of top-shelf nobodies, Dolemite’s plot was so thin it barely existed at all, but who cares? Nobody was going to see this movie for its clever plot twists. They were going to see it so that they could hear Moore call some two-bit cocksucking honky a rat-soup-eating, born-insecure, no-business-having motherfucker. Moore couldn’t act, his director couldn’t direct, and it’s pretty likely that his key grip couldn’t grip, but that doesn’t keep Dolemite from being as straight-up entertaining as anything produced during the blaxploitation era. Whether he was telling his bitch not to buy him no cotton draws or suggesting that a guard use his recently shed prison uniform to wipe his ass with, Dolemite was hilarious to watch, and helped define an insanely politically incorrect archetype that would inform aspects of American culture for decades to come. Even now, Dolemite probably ranks behind only Scarface as the movie that most influenced hip-hop. And even if you’re not a rap fan, if you can watch Moore do his thing without smiling, you might want to have your fun gland looked at.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977)

The key to a successful exploitation movie often boils down to having just enough intriguing elements and shocking visuals to fill a two-minute trailer. In the case of The Hills Have Eyes, those two minutes are just about all the movie has going for it. You’ve got the family driving their Winnebago off the beaten path, despite the warnings of the old coot at the gas station. You’ve got the tires blowing out, leaving the family stranded in the middle of the Nevada desert. And you’ve got the most exploitable element of all: the head of Michael Berryman. Berryman – who plays Pluto, the muscle of the clan of cannibalistic mutants that terrorizes the family – was never known for his romantic leading roles. His lumpy, oblong head, recessed eyes, lopsided nose and complete absence of hair pretty much ensured him steady work as one of nature’s mistakes, and he’s true to form here. Other than Berryman, The Hills Have Eyes is thin gruel indeed, one of Wes Craven’s most overrated works, way too reliant on the dog-jumping-out-of-the-shadows school of shock effects. And yet it spawned not only a sequel and a remake, but even a remake of the sequel – or is it a sequel to the remake? Either way – that’s exploitation!

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978)

Those looking for either a passionate condemnation or defense of Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman) will have to look elsewhere, since aside from its unforgettably titillating VHS cover artwork – which made my teenage heart yearn to rent the film – and its infamous reputation, this piece of exploitation hackwork mostly elicits a shrug. Still, it’s nearly impossible to deny the status of Zarchi’s shocker as an exploitation cinema touchstone, what with its Z-grade craftsmanship, empty-headed commingling of sex and violence, and pitiful strategy of reveling in abhorrent brutality and misogyny and then attempting to condemn such behavior with more gruesomeness. Over the course of 30 minutes, a New Yorker vacationing in the country is raped by sadistic hicks (including a mentally challenged virgin Neanderthal) who don’t like city folk. After suffering this assault, the woman seeks lethal vengeance on her attackers, a twist which may upend the film’s early gender-power dynamics, but nonetheless mainly just affords Zarchi further opportunity to stage bloodthirsty mayhem.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five & Six...if you dare!!!!

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

Spirit Awards Unveiled; Mickey Rourke Crazy Train Rolls On

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:11:00 GMT

SEVEN THINGS I DISCOVERED WHILE WATCHING THE SPIRIT AWARDS ON IFC YESTERDAY:

1. Steve Coogan is a better host than Rainn Wilson. But then again, so am I.

2. Melissa Leo takes the whole "indie spirit" thing way, way too seriously (and the "fashion" thing way, way too not seriously).

3. Teri Hatcher can neither sing nor dance, nor is she funny, making her a curious choice to perform a comical musical tribute to Wendy & Lucy.

4. On the day of her big make-out scene with Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen had a panic attack about a mysterious freckle he'd just discovered and rushed to a doctor to get it checked out. (But apparently it was nothing).

5. Rosie Perez thinks Penelope Cruz is a fly bitch.

6. According to Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts did something terrible fifteen years ago. But Hollywood should forgive him.

7. We're all going to be really, really sick of Mickey Rourke by next year's Spirit Awards (if not much, much sooner).

As for the rest of what I learned watching the live broadcast from a big tent in Santa Monica, here's a list of the 2009 Spirit Award Winners:

Best Feature
The Wrestler

Best Director
Tom McCarthy, The Visitor

Best Screenplay
Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best First Feature
Synecdoche, New York (Director: Charlie Kaufman)

Best First Screenplay
Dustin Lance Black, Milk

John Cassavetes Award (For the Best Feature made for under $500,000)
In Search of a Midnight Kiss (Writer/Director: Alex Holdridge)

Best Supporting Female
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Supporting Male
James Franco, Milk

Best Female Lead
Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Best Male Lead
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best Cinematography
Maryse Alberti, The Wrestler

Best Foreign Film
The Class (Director: Laurent Cantet)

Best Documentary
Man on Wire (Director: James Marsh)

Unwatchable #51: “Simon Sez”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loki Rourke, 1991-2009

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Good news, ladies! It looks like Mickey Rourke now needs a date for the Oscars. Unfortunately, this development has come at the expense of Rourke’s longtime companion, Loki, the 18-year-old Chihuahua who has been at the actor’s side throughout the red carpet season. The poor critter passed away on Monday, less than a week before the Academy Awards ceremony (and, as Defamer points out, this tragic event happened too late for the beloved pooch to qualify for the annual “In Memoriam” segment.)

As the owner of a Chihuahua-American myself, this news hits me particularly hard. And while I don’t necessarily want to place any blame for this tragedy on the grieving owner, I do wonder if the notoriously hard-partying Rourke overestimated the geriatric Loki’s ability to keep up with the rigorous award season party schedule. My boy Maury is only ten, and he needs a nap after a particularly strenuous poop. On the other hand, part of me wonders if this is all a publicity stunt designed to win over any swing voters in the Academy. I guess we’ll know if Mickey shows up to accept his award with Loki tucked under his arm. But don’t show up on the red carpet with a new doggie, Mick! Too soon.

Related:
Mickey Rourke Gets Up Off the Canvas
Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky Q & A

Screengrab Predicts The Oscars: Winners (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

BEST ACTOR

And the nominees are...

Richard Jenkins – The Visitor
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn – Milk
Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler

Paul Clark Predicts: Mickey Rourke

This might be more of a ballgame had Penn not won five years ago -- and if Milk had real Best Picture traction. As it stands, Rourke has the comeback story, the body transformation, the hype machine, and best of all, the awesome performance to carry him here.

Andrew Osborne Predicts: Sean Penn

Mickey Rouke got his Golden Globe, so his fairy tale comeback story had a nice happy ending, but Sean Penn won the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance in a Lead Role, so I think he’ll take the Oscar. Besides, for once, I actually want to hear Penn pontificate on a political subject...specifically, I want him to aim his famous humorless scowl at California’s clueless voters and ask them why they felt the need to make George Takei sad.

Leonard Pierce Predicts: Mickey Rourke

Frank Langella’s blowsy overacting is getting way too much attention, making him a risk to steal the thunder of much better performances. Brad Pitt’s Benjamin Button is showy but ultimately hollow, which should leave Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke to fight it out over Milk and The Wrestler. Given Penn’s history and AMPAS’ love of a comeback story, this one should by Rourke’s to lose.

Should Win: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Will Win: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Nick Schager Predicts: Mickey Rourke

Penn’s superb turn as the slain Harvey Milk is just as worthy, but the Academy loves underdog-comeback stories, and this year, that narrative belongs to The Wrestler’s Mickey Rourke.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts: Sean Penn

Scott Von Doviak Predicts: Mickey Rourke

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: MICKEY ROURKE

BEST DIRECTOR

And the nominees are...

Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry – The Reader
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant – Milk

Paul Clark Predicts: Danny Boyle

There are years when Oscar voters decide to spread the wealth by giving this award to a celebrated filmmaker whose film they liked just a shade less than the Best Picture winner. But this isn’t one of those years -- among the nominees no one’s particularly “due”, so they’ll fall back on their Best Picture pick.

Andrew Osborne Predicts: David Fincher

Just hedging my bets on this one, in the same way Academy voters may split their love in the absence of a slam-dunk Best Picture frontrunner.

Leonard Pierce Predicts: Ron Howard

This could be a curious case, insofar as there doesn’t appear to be any single movie poised to sweep the Oscars. I had originally predicted that neither David Fincher nor Gus Van Sant would receive a nomination due to the atypical films they made, but my colleague Scott Von Doviak, probably correctly, felt that this increases rather than lessens their chances. Stephen Daldry winning would be a worst-case scenario.

Should Win: Gus Van Sant, Milk
Will Win: Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon

Nick Schager Predicts: Danny Boyle

Of all the nominees, Boyle’s work is the flashiest, and his film has populist-landslide-winner written all over it. Given that he was also honored by the Director’s Guild of America, count on him taking home the gold.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts: Danny Boyle/Ron Howard

It's a toss-up between everyone's favorite — Slumdog Millionaire — and Frost/Nixon because Ron Howard is exactly the kind of "Hollywood insider taking his art seriously" that the Academy likes.

Scott Von Doviak Predicts: Danny Boyle

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: DANNY BOYLE

Stay tuned for our Best Picture predictions and your very own souvenir Academy Awards ballot as the Screengrab 2009 Oscar Special continues way past your bedtime and pre-empts the evening news!

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Coming Soon: 55 Remakes!

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Almost every weekday morning we bring you news of a new, usually ill-advised remake in the Hollywood pipeline, but a site called Den of Geek has gone the extra mile by compiling a master list of 55 movies slated for the recycle bin. “Some are finished, some have only just been announced, and one or two are rumoured,” a brief intro warns, before diving into a pigpile of retreads and rip-offs. Here are just a few of them:

Fantastic Voyage – “The 1966 classic about a submarine that’s shrunk and injected into a man’s bloodstream to try and stop a potentially fatal blood clot is on director Roland Emmerich’s slate. Cormac and Marianne Wibberley – who wrote the National Treasure movies, among others – are on script duties.”

Meatballs – “The original: directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Bill Murray. The proposed remake: potentially to be directed by John Whitesell, he who gave us Big Momma’s House 2 and Deck The Halls.” Wow, this could be even better than Meatballs 4.

Near Dark – “Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes company is behind the remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 vampire flick.” Clearly Bay will not stop until he has remade every horror movie, at which point he will begin remaking his own remakes.

Angel Heart – “The Robert De Niro/Mickey Rourke horror, originally directed by Alan Parker, has been picked up by the man who used to run New Line Cinema, Michael De Luca.” Our guess is that both De Niro and Rourke are available for the remake.

If you have a strong stomach, check out the full list here.

Morning Deal Report: Scorsese and Day-Lewis Reunite

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:20:00 GMT

Blart has fallen. The Liam Neeson thriller Taken topped the box office with $24.6 million, knocking everyone’s favorite mall cop to the runner-up spot with $14 million. The Uninvited debuted in third place with $10.5 million, with Hotel for Dogs and Gran Torino rounding out the top five.

Martin Scorsese is lining up his third collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis. Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence “is set in the 17th century as two Jesuit priests face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and to spread the gospel of Christianity,” Variety reports. Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal are also in negotiations to co-star.

Mickey Rouke, who seems determined never to be out of work again, is in talks to star in the gangster movie Broken Horses for Indian writer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra. “Co-produced by Mumbai-based Reliance Big Pictures, Horses, which plans to shoot in New Mexico and New York, is part of a multipicture deal between Chopra and the Indian studio,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Scorsese and De Niro Heard You Paint Houses
Mickey Rourke's Whiplash

Trailer Review: Killshot

Paul Clark — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Looking at the IMDb page for Killshot, I can’t help but be a little confused about the parties involved. Sure, I can understand Quentin Tarantino exec-producing an Elmore Leonard adaptation. But somewhat more unexpected is that the director and screenwriter of note on the film have, between then, been responsible for Shakespeare in Love, Wings of the Dove, Proof, and The Four Feathers- in other words, not exactly Hollywood’s reigning kings of taut suspense. But looking at the “trivia” page, it all begins to make sense- Killshot is a former Miramax film, and director John Madden and writer Hossein Amini were Miramax favorites back when the film was shot in 2005. Hell, even the 3 1/2-year delay makes sense considering who ponied up the dough, although the question remains of why anyone would actually sit on a movie for that long. Were they waiting for one of the lead actors to become bankable? Tom Jane’s leading-man career didn’t quite pan out, and Diane Lane isn’t really able to open a movie, so maybe MGM (the new distributor) figures that Mickey Rourke’s Wrestler buzz will boost the box office enough to make it worth releasing. Or perhaps we’ve got a Midnight Meat Train situation here, with MGM contractually bound to give this a theatrical release. Yes, but will it be any good? On the basis of the trailer, it looks pretty uninspired, and is the sort of boilerplate trailer I practically forget while I’m watching. Which probably explains why I devoted so much time to the production history- after all, I had to write about something, didn’t I?

Sundance Preview: Five Movies to Skip

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

In anticipation of tonight’s kickoff of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, I’ve been previewing the must-see films: Tuesday we looked at documentaries and yesterday we checked out the narrative features. But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. Every film festival of note screens its share of duds, and you don’t want be wasting valuable time you could spend riding a giant inner tube down a snowy peak. (Seriously, if you’re in Park City this week, do this. It’s super fun.) Here are five movies I’d scratch off my list if I happened to be in town.

BLACK DYNAMITE

Sure, this could be entertaining. The trailer makes it looks like pure blaxploitation pastiche, as if it’s the missing third piece of Grindhouse. The Sundance guide does nothing to dissuade me from this perception: “Black Dynamite is a throwback with an attitude. Hilarious, campy, hot, and sexy, it plays with every cliché from 1970s film and television, with a few new ones thrown in for color.” Personally, I think that could get real old real quick, but then, I sat through both I’m Gonna Get You Sucka and Undercover Brother, so maybe I’m just burnt out.

THE INFORMERS

Less Than Zero and American Psycho have their defenders, I suppose, but none of them are currently typing these words. So this description doesn’t particular light my fire: “Sex, drugs, and new wave...Los Angeles in the early 1980s: a time of excess and decadence, and nobody captures it better than Bret Easton Ellis as he coadapts his own acclaimed novel for the screen.” That’s not a world I have any interest in revisiting, although given that the cast includes Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder and the late Brad Renfro, I wouldn’t mind seeing a warts-and-all making-of documentary. I’m guessing it was not a placid, well-oiled production.

SHRINK

In another time – it seems so distant now – I would have watched Kevin Spacey read the phone book. His string of ‘90s performances, including Glengarry Glen Ross, Swimming with Sharks and The Usual Suspects left me eager to see what he’d do next. Then he caught the worst case of Oscar-itis since Nicolas Cage. (Pay It Forward. K-PAX. The Fucking Life of David Fucking Gale!) Now I can scarcely stand the sight of him, and Shrink sure doesn’t sound like the movie that will change that. “What happens when the people we count on to hold us together…are barely holding it together themselves? Jonas Pate's Shrink is a striking, fast-paced exposé of the ‘other’ Hollywood, featuring folks living outside their comfort zone and the people who put them there. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) is a psychiatrist with an A-list clientele, including a once-famous actress (Saffron Burrows), an insecure young writer (Mark Webber), and a comically obsessive-compulsive superagent (Dallas Roberts).” Kevin – get help!

SPREAD

The Sundance guide’s description of Spread is simply overflowing with sentences that make me never want to set foot in a movie theater again. ‘Los Angeles is often the customary site for mythmaking in the American cultural iconography. It is a place, for instance, where the legend of the sexual exploits of the male gigolo seems perfectly at home in the decadent universe of Hollywood dreams and nightmares. Surely inspired by the classic tradition of American Gigolo and Shampoo, Spread is such a perfectly tuned, contemporary depiction of the trials and tribulations of sleeping your way to wealth and success that, guilty pleasure or not, it’s irresistible. Especially so since it’s driven by the iconic persona of Ashton Kutcher. – ” Aaaand, this is the point where I make a break for the bathroom and hug the toilet close to my face. I didn’t even get to the part about his romancing of “middle-aged client” Anne Heche. There are some visuals I don’t need in my head.

SPRING BREAKDOWN

I don’t want to hate on Amy Poehler or (especially) Parker Posey, whose big screen appearances have been all too scarce of late, but this looks like absolute dogshit. “For Judi, Gayle, and Becky, tragically unhip bosom buddies pushing 40, “make-your-own-pizza night” constitutes the pinnacle of revelry. But when Judi’s fiancé turns out to be gay, Gayle’s face repulses a blind guy, and Becky’s beloved cat kicks the bucket, they’re ready for real pampering. Dusting themselves off, the trio heads for some R&R;on South Padre Island, where Becky’s supposed to chaperone her boss’s daughter.” Seriously, try to get through the trailer above. This is a Sundance movie? Time to hit the slopes!

Screengrab Live Blogs The Golden Globes

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:39:00 GMT

(All times TiVo approximate)

7:33 - Nice silly bow tie, Brad.

7:35 - Way to step on your annoying daughter’s dress, Billy Ray.

7:38 - Good Lord! Marisa Tomei is wearing the puffy shirt! Is her next movie The Pirates of Penzance?

7:41 - Brangelina blow off Ryan Seacrest...heh-heh-heh...

7:46 - My lovely Polish bride Amy acquaints me with the Golden Globes dinner menu:

APPETIZERS
California organic field green salad with white asparagus
Crisp apricot dill goat cheese in phylo and poached pear
Maple syrup apple cider vinaigrette

ENTREES
Grilled prime tenderloin of beef with green tea pearl and sautéed aromatic Asian spice marinated sea bass
Sherry wine yuzu pepper sauce
Grilled king oyster mushroom
Jicama, Romanesco and potato onion croquette

DESSERT
Golden chocolate Globe with organic yogurt pistachio mousse

7:49 - The E! Channel breaks out their "Star Tracker" technology, wherein video arrows point out the stars to us in wide shots of the red carpet. Note to E! - Just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.

7:50 - Jeremy Piven appears on the red carpet. Apparently his mercury levels have returned to normal. Thank you, baby Jesus!

7:53 - Amy is sick of all the sand colored couture. Her favorite gowns of the evening: Drew Barrymore and Christina Applegate. Me, I could eat me some Anne Hathaway with a spoon.

8:02 - Amy thinks J. Lo is wearing one of Cher's Bob Mackie gowns from a 1970s time machine.

8:04 - Okay, I haven't seen The Reader and I love Kate Winslet, but...really? Best Supporting Actress? She must give really good Nazi.

8:06 - Damn, that Kate Winslet is adorable. Meanwhile...um...is Sting in that production of Pirates of Penzance with Marisa Tomei?

8:10 - BROOOOOOOOOOCCCEE!!!!!

8:11 - I'm trying to figure out who or what Darren Aronofsky looks like in his funny weaselly moustache. A villain in a Preston Sturges film? The Guy Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta? Meanwhile, Amy thinks Rumer Willis (in the background as a Golden Globes girl) may have had her chin shaved, since her big square potato head is no longer quite as prominent and she actually looks kinda cute. From a distance.

8:13 - Robert Downey Jr. apparently stuck his toe in the same electrical outlet as Drew Barrymore.

8:18 - Tom Wilkinson has apparently been drinking since noon.

8:20 - Hooray for Laura Dern! Amy's happy she kept her original nose, and I'm happy David Lynch used his mysterious powers of transcendental meditation to help her win.

8:25 - What happened to Don Cheadle's hair?

8:27 - Amy does not care about Eva Mendes. Even if she is a proud Cuban-American. (But we both love whoever that guy was she introduced...I missed what he said because I was Googling Eva Mendes and found this great shot of her plumber's crack while Amy drools over Hamm, John Hamm:

8:31 - Both my mother and Amy's mother call to express outrage over Hamm getting robbed. Amy dubs it Hammgate.

8:36 - Ricky Gervais = hilarious. Tells Kate Winslet, "See? I told you...do a Holocaust movie and you'll win awards!"

8:39 - The hobbits from the Fellowship of the Ring...sorry, I mean, the Jonas Brothers, present the award for Best Foregone Conclusion...I mean, uh, Best Animated Feature. Amy says the middle Jonas Brother looks like the guy she lost her virginity to (although I saw the guy recently and he no longer has that silky Jonas hair...or any hair, really).

8:41 - Amy wants Johnny Depp, meanwhile, to simply wash his hair.

8:43 - Sally Hawkins wins Best Actress for Comedy! I couldn't be happier! Amy is also happy for Sally, but wants to feed her skinny ass some brie.

8:45 - Sally Hawkins is full of love. And, possibly, nitrous oxide.

8:54 - Cheadle: good bald. Ralph Fiennes: not so much. (Amy, meanwhile, loves loves loves Drew Barrymore's dress.)

8:58 - Ledger wins. Universal sadness.

9:03 - Meanwhile, over on CNN, they're interviewing Priscilla Presley, who apparently got some cut-rate plastic surgery that left her looking like a Dick Tracy villain.

9:07 - Colin Farrell has that weird Aronofsky moustache, too! Trend alert!

9:10 - Waltz With Bashir guy: best acceptance speech of the evening.

9:11 - Maggie Gyllenhaal wears my aunt's drapes. Shirley Maclaine is either stoned or just got hit in the face with a frying pan.

9:13 - Paul Giamatti, for some reason, decided to come dressed as Judah Friedlander.

9:18 - Mmm! Look at that sexy Seth Rogen! Amy prefers fat Seth. Either way, Mickey Rourke is probably gonna kick his ass for that coke-snorting joke.

9:21 - What did David Duchovny mouth to the camera while blowing a kiss? Amy's guess: "I love hookers."

9:23 - Alec Baldwin thanks his vile pig of a daughter. Awwww.

9:31 - Giamatti!

9:36 - I don't have any little snarky comment to make, but I must just pause here to acknowledge the comic brilliance of Tracy Morgan, edging past the Waltz With Bashir guy for best speech. (Lorny Mikes!)

9:41 - Didn't mention it at the time, but controversy breaks out here in Somerville over Glenn Close's outfit. Amy says age-appropriate. Her mother, phoning in from New Hampshire, says early '80s Boca Raton.

9:43 - "Mmm...Pierce Brosnan," quoth Amy. "Nothin' wrong with that." She also likes him because he has a fat wife.

9:46 - P. Diddy and Kate Beckinsale step down off a wedding cake to present a nice Indian man with the award for Best Soundtrack (for Slumdog Millionaire).

9:48 - Nice boobs, Tina Fey!

9:54 - Scorcese!

9:58 - Much whispering about the awe-inspiring wonder of Steven Spielberg and his gift to the art of cinema. Bathroom break!

10:06 - All right, snark aside: (A) Spielberg throws some love to Scorcese, which is nice, but (B) that montage of Spielberg movies reminds you...damn, Steven Spielberg sure made a bunch of good-ass movies. (And, y'know, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). This speech sure is going on, though.

10:09 - Spielberg: still talking.

10:13 - Is it more that Emma Thompson's really big or that Dustin Hoffman's really small?

10:15 - Danny Boyle wins Best Director. Again, the toe-in-electric-outlet hair. Trend alert!

10:19 - Amy says Colin Farrell looks less like a pubic hair with his hair cut short. And I'm happy to see the Bruges love: rent it now! (By the way, I didn't realize when I put In Bruges on my 2008 Top Ten list that the movie's writer/director, Martin McDonagh, is also the playwright responsible for The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the bloodiest play (and one of the most entertaining) I've ever seen on stage. If you get a chance, be sure to check it out!) I have plenty of time to write about all this, incidentally, because Colin Farrell will apparently never stop talking. "You're not Steven Spielberg!" says Amy, who hates him. Me, I thought his speech was kinda sweet.

10:29 - Hayek, Johansson and Cruz all enter my consciousness at once. Amy breaks out the smelling salts.

10:31 - Borat!

10:32 - Really? The Golden Globe audience boos a Madonna joke? Hmm. While I ponder this strange development, Vicky Cristina Barcelona wins best comedy/musical, which makes me think of Salma, Scarlett and Penelope again...mmm...

10:36 - Oh, wait...add Freida Pinto to that fantasy...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

10:39 - Kate Winslet momentarily forgets that Angelina Jolie was also nominated for Best Actress. Angelina Jolie: not happy. Mark Wahlberg says hi to my mother for me.

10:45 - Mad Men? Rules.

10:49 - All the people who wouldn't return Mickey Rourke's calls last year are now very happy for Mickey Rourke.

10:50 - Mickey Rourke thanks David Unger for his balls.

10:52 - Darren Aronofsky flips the bird on national television. "Nice, real nice," says Amy's mother, phoning in from New Hampshire. "John Ford would never do that."

10:54 - Mickey Rourke thanks Scott Franklin for breaking his balls. Somehow Axl Rose was also involved with The Wrestler, making it the New Jersey-est movie of all time. Finally Rourke thanks his dogs. "That's the kinda shit you wait up all night for," says Amy.

10:58 - And...Slumdog! The guy accepting the award jumps the Aronofsky train with a verbal finger flip...trend alert!

Anyway, thanks for playing along at home! And now, to recap...the complete list of winners:

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler (2008)

Best Television Series - Drama

Winner: "Mad Men" (2007)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road (2008)

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Colin Farrell for In Bruges (2008)

Best Director - Motion Picture

Winner: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Tina Fey for "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Original Score - Motion Picture

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - A.R. Rahman

Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Paul Giamatti for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Alec Baldwin for "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - Simon Beaufoy

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Laura Linney for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: Vals Im Bashir (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Winner: Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: "John Adams" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Best Animated Film

Winner: WALL·E (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama

Winner: Anna Paquin for "True Blood" (2007)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Winner: Gabriel Byrne for "In Treatment" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Laura Dern for Recount (2008) (TV)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Tom Wilkinson for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Original Song - Motion Picture

Winner: The Wrestler (2008)("The Wrestler")

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Winner: Kate Winslet for The Reader (2008)

Screengrab Predicts the Oscars: Nominations (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

BEST ACTOR

Scott Von Doviak Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

If Sean Penn can get nominated for I Am Sam, there's no reason to think his beautiful work in Milk will be overlooked. Everyone loves a comeback, so even if they're a little worried he'll take a drunken stumble into Jack Nicholson's lap, Mickey Rourke will be nominated for The Wrestler. Rounding out the leading men will be Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Brad Pitt (Benjamin Button), and this year's sentimental "Hey, you're almost friggin' 80!" nominee, Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino).

WINNER
Rourke. Watch out, ladies!

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts:

NOMINEES
Christian Bale (The Dark Knight)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Synecdoche, NY)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Since Philip Seymour Hoffman appeared in two movies likely to figure in the Academy Awards this year, it follows that he must be nominated for at least one. Brad Pitt will be nominated for long and faithful service, Christian Bale for being in a blockbuster that didn't suck, and Mickey Rourke for appearing again out of nowhere. Sean Penn will win, because he is playing a gay man. But also because this is the best role he has done in a good while, if not ever. Madonna will be jealous.

WINNER
Sean Penn

Paul Clark Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Where’s Richard Jenkins, you ask? The Screengrab favorite won numerous early accolades for his work in The Visitor, but the risky plan to open the film early to build steam for Jenkins has led to the unassuming actor getting lost in the end-of-the-year shuffle, as most of the honors have been split between Penn and Rourke. With early predictions such as Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road) and Benicio Del Toro (Che) having largely stalled out, Jenkins is the only potential spoiler here, but between Rourke’s comeback-kid status, the high-profile biopic turns of Penn and Langella, and two big stars in Eastwood and Pitt, I’m predicting that Jenkins pulls a Paul Giamatti and gets shut out of a nomination despite the early hosannas. As for the eventual winner, it seems too soon for Penn to win a second Oscar, and unless Rourke torpedoes his chances between now and February 22, I suspect that capping off his comeback with a statuette will prove too perfect an ending for voters to resist.

WINNER
Mickey Rourke

Andrew Osborne Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

After all the endless hype about Mickey Rourke’s comeback in The Wrestler, it’d be heee-larious if he didn’t actually get nominated. And I’m guessing there’s more than a few Academy voters not exactly wishing Mickey well...but Hollywood and professional sports are all about storylines, so a Rourke nod seems inevitable. Unlike Rourke, Frank Langella and Sean Penn were playing other people in their movies rather than semi-autobiographical stunt-casting versions of themselves...and doing it well: Penn, in particular, seemed like an entirely different human being in Milk (which, y’know, is probably why the award is “Best Actor” instead of “Best Comeback”). Then again, there’s something to be said for a beloved screen icon just playing a stylized, hyper-real version of themselves, especially when they’re still kicking more ass in their seventies than alleged action star Shia LaBeouf will kick on the ass-kickingest day of his life, and especially when said role occurs in what may be said icon’s last screen role ever...in other words, I’ll be surprised if Clint Eastwood doesn’t grab a nomination for Gran Torino. And speaking of beloved movie stars, I’m supposed to pick Brad Pitt for the fifth spot, but what if the Academy decides his performance in Benjamin Button was more to do with CGI than acting chops? In that case, they might choose a dark horse, under-the-radar industry vet who’s paid his dues and (unlike Pitt) may never get another shot at the brass ring: the lovely and talented “that guy” Richard Jenkins for his role in The Visitor. (But Penn’s gonna actually win, partly thanks to Proposition 8...and I mentioned that whole crazy “acting” thing, yes?)

WINNER
Sean Penn

Leonard Pierce Predicts:

NOMINATIONS
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Goodness knows why anyone continues to insist that Leonardo Di Caprio is a good actor, but I’d bet my next paycheck on him getting the nod. Frank Langella, likewise, plays Nixon like a broad majestic Shannon – that ain’t acting, that’s overacting – but the Academy loves an old pro. Pitt’s Button nom makes up for the Burn After Reading one he won’t get. In the end, though, it’ll be a battle between comeback kid Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Sean Penn’s well-deserved nomination for Milk; I’ll predict that Rourke gets it, though, since Penn has had (and will have) many more moments in the sun, while this is likely Mickey’s last dance. BIGGEST SCREWJOB: Benicio Del Toro’s incredibly tight performance in Che won’t get recognized because the public won’t sit through a 17-hour movie, and right-wing critics will yap endlessly that the movie glorifies a killer, which has never, ever happened before in a Hollywood movie.

WINNER
Mickey Rourke

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NOMINEES
CLINT EASTWOOD, FRANK LANGELLA, SEAN PENN, BRAD PITT, MICKEY ROURKE

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WINNER
MICKEY ROURKE

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five & Six

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Morning Deal Report: Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Mickey Rourke isn’t taking any chances with this whole comeback thing. Just yesterday we told you Rourke has joined The Expendables, and today The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on The Wrestler’s role in Iron Man 2. “Marvel has been keeping a very tight lid on the script for the sequel, being written by Justin Theroux, but it is known that Rourke would play a tattooed Russian heavy named Ivan who becomes Whiplash, a man with deadly, technologically enhanced coils.” Wait, isn’t that Dr. Octopus? Anyway, Rourke won’t be alone in terrorizing fellow comebacker Robert Downey, Jr. – since one villain never seems to be enough for any superhero sequel, Sam Rockwell is also aboard as “Justin Hammer, a multibillionaire businessman and a rival of industrialist Anthony Stark, AKA Iron Man.”

Leonardo DiCaprio will try to Beat the Reaper. “The protagonist in the novel penned by Josh Bazell is a Manhattan emergency room doctor, whose life becomes complicated when a mobster recognizes the doc from his former life as a hitman who went into the witness protection program,” Variety reports.

It’s official: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards really is called Inglourious Basterds, and it now has a release date. The World War II epic starring Brad Pitt will reach theaters August 21st, courtesy of The Weinstein Company. Or is that the Winesteen Kumpanee?

Related:
Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler" Pleases Mankind, Annoys Iran
Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" Unleashed

Ladies Only at Slate Movie Club

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The previous movie year can never truly be put to bed until the Slate Movie Club has convened. In the past we’ve seen fireworks fly, particularly when Armond White was a participant, but recent years have seen a more collegial atmosphere prevail. This year it’s more of a sorority vibe, actually; Slate critic Dana Stevens has invited four female critics to participate in the roundtable. No boys allowed! Since, despite our best efforts, the Screengrab remains largely a boy’s club, we’re all in favor of this development, especially since the self-proclaimed “Vagina Movie Monologues” group is more than willing to dish on such topics as the unusually smooth face of Nicole Kidman.

“We needn't discuss anything prototypically ‘feminine’—though the mere question of what that might mean could make for a great conversation,” Stevens writes. “I'll raise another topic that we've all discussed, freely and hilariously, over drinks but tend to approach gingerly in print: What is the state of plastic surgery on-screen in 2008? And why is this topic so hard to broach without descending (or seeming to descend) into the ‘what has she had done?’ realm of celebrity gossip? Are we entitled to ask what's become of the once expressively mobile faces we come to the movies to see?”

"You know, I was talking to a (male) colleague about how we, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Movie Club, were all cautiously excited about talking about Worked Over Faces (to put it succinctly)—I mean, from a cinematic point of view—and he observed that women are much harder on other women than men are,” Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly responds. “I briefly felt shallow. (He's a great friend.) But then I thought, really, it's that we women look at faces (and boobs, and butts, and the kitchens, gardens, and sunsets) on screen in a different way than men do. It's like—I don't know, it's like we do an instantaneous translation: "Oh, hmmm, Nicole Kidman's forehead and Hugh Jackman's teeth, not real, OK, and now back to Australia.”

In all fairness, we’ve been known to mention the topic of Kidman’s peculiar visage – to say nothing of Mickey Rourke’s Dick Tracy villain-esque face – here at the Screengrab, too. And it should be noted that the ladies of Slate do go on to actually discuss, you know, the movies of the year. You can read the ongoing discussion starting here.

Related:
Slate Movie Club Still Swinging
Nicole Kidman Marries Charlize Theron

Morning Deal Report: McG Under the Sea

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

McG is in demand! Not by me or you or anyone who actually enjoys watching movies, of course, but by studio execs who can’t get enough of the half-named wonder. The Terminator: Salvation director has settled on his next project and it is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo. That thoroughly unnecessary and downright distracting subtitle is our first hint that this is not something to look forward to. “Scripted by Bill Marsilli, the film is an origin story of Nemo as he creates his warship, the Nautilus. The characters come from the Jules Verne novel,” Variety insists. The last time we saw Captain Nemo on the big screen was in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Poor guy.

The Tron sequel has landed its lead and sadly, it’s not the fellow pictured here. It’s “up-and-comer” Garrett Hedlund, who The Hollywood Reporter helpfully informs us “has been considered one of those actors that is on the cusp within the industry, though without much of a profile in middle America. Starring in a $150 million effects-intensive feature could change that.” Unless it’s a sequel to Tron.

The cast of The Expendables keeps on growing. Earlier this week we told you Forest Whitaker was set to sign on, and now comeback kid Mickey Rourke has added his name to the roster.” Rourke will play an unscrupulous arms dealer who becomes the go-to guy for a group of mercenaries planning to topple a South American dictator,” Variety reports. Comeback over!

Related:
Turning the Anime of the Past into the Bad Movies of Tomorrow
Mickey Rourke Gets Up Off the Canvas

The Best of 2008: Leonard Pierce's Picks for the Best Movies of the Year, Part Two

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:45:00 GMT

5. WALL*E (Andrew Stanton, dir.)

Pixar has been on such a roll of late that if they were a single director, they’d be getting mention in the same breath as the golden age greats. But they’re not; they’re an aggregate of many clever, talented folks who make computer-generated cartoons that are at least partly intended for children. I’m not going to argue that this isn’t sometimes a weakness; in WALL*E, the environmental message only seems fitting and appropriate because I happen to agree with it, and the crypto-Objectivism in The Incredibles only bothered me because I don’t. But regardless of the heavy-handedness of the moral, it can’t be denied that WALL*E is flat out the most wonderful film of the year, hopeful and funny and romantic and bittersweet all at the same time, and wrapped up in a package so beautiful to look at you wonder why anyone ever questions the potential of CGI. And if this astounding motion picture spawned an obnoxious marketing empire, one can only shake one’s head and say “Damn kids don’t know how good they’ve got it.”

4. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (Jonathan Demme, dir.)

If you ever want to flummox a music critic, ask him to describe one of his favorite new bands without comparing them to another band. Of course, Rachel Getting Married proves that the same can occasionally be said for movie critics: it seems impossible to talk about without referencing something else. It’s got the dysfunctional family dynamics of Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime; the comeback-kid story of The Wrestler; the hateful-misanthrope-as-vehicle-for-joyous-redemption jawn of a Wes Anderson film (only better) and the structure and form of the late Robert Altman’s best work (only different). With all of these elements at play, though, it never seems derivative of anything else, only reminiscent in the best possible way. In the end, Rachel Getting Married is its own film, familiar yet new and impressive, and carried along by some of the finest acting of the year, most especially from Anne Hathaway and Bill Irwin.

3. CHE (Steven Soderbergh, dir.)

Steven Soderbergh keeps on making great movies, and never the same one twice. His latest is getting lots of what child care experts call “good attention” and “bad attention”; it’s certain that Soderbergh intended it that way, with its rigid formal structure, back-spasm-inducing length, difficult tonal shifts, and…oh, yeah, it’s a biopic about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. It’s just as hard to figure out how much of the negative reception is due to political and moral judgment of the revolutionary Che Guevara as it is to figure out how much of the positive reception comes from those who valorize him, but taken purely as a movie, Che is hard to beat: it’s formally daring, adventurously directed, risk-taking, well-made, and held together by a powerful performance that shows its subject neither as a heroic rebel or a vicious murderer, but simply as a man so consumed by his cause that he didn’t know what else to do than keep fighting for it.

2. WENDY AND LUCY (Kelly Reichardt, dir.)

There have been a number of exceptionally well-done documentaries in recent years about ordinary people dangling from the precipice of financial ruin in economically uncertain times, but successful narrative films dealing with the same subject have been few and far between. That’s largely because it’s hard to approach the topic in fiction without becoming didactic, maudlin, or treacly – and those challenges are certainly, and perilously, evident in Kelly Reichardt’s story about a young woman in brutally limited circumstances who loses her beloved dog while pursuing a slender chance at a decent job. But the miraculous thing about Wendy and Lucy is that it toes that line from its first frame to its last without ever tumbling down and making a mess of itself. That’s a testament to the top-notch script, the surprisingly deep direction, and the beautiful performance by lead actress Michelle Williams. No one could ever have predicted that an heir to the Italian neo-realist tradition would emerge in 2008 from America’s Pacific Northwest; that it happened is one of the year’s greatest surprises.

1. SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, dir.)

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut. I first heard him talk about his desire to direct way back in 2004, when I interviewed him for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and when Synechdoche, New York was finally announced, I was full of dread. The video stores of America are choked with mediocre-to-bad movies by talented writers who decided what they really wanted to do was direct. I needn’t have worried: Synechdoche, New York is easily my favorite film of the year. Kaufman approached directing with the same meticulous, self-searching approach that he does writing, and the result is nothing short of astounding. The best movies, for me, are the ones that seem to completely rewire my head – that are so profound and well-crafted that they redefine my basic approach to their subject, form or content. Charlie Kaufman accomplishes that his first time out of the gate, and that’s the mark of a major talent.

ALMOST MADE IT: The Strangers, Doubt, Iron Man, The Wrestler, Bigger Stronger Faster*.

DIDN'T SEE THEM: Entre les Murs (The Class), Standard Operating Procedure, Lat den Ratte Komme In (Let the Right One In), Dear Zachary: A Letter To His Son About His Father, Trouble the Water, Full Battle Rattle, Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon).

PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler; Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married; Kristin Scott Thomas, Il y a Longtemps Que Je T'aime; Viola Davis, Doubt.

MADE IN 2007, BUT GREAT IN 2008: 4 Luni 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days); Paranoid Park; My Winnipeg; Une Vielle Maitress (The Last Mistress); Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven); Encounters at the End of the World; Chop Shop.

OVERRATED: Waltz with Bashir; In Bruges; Happy-Go-Lucky; Slumdog Millionaire; Kung Fu Panda.

Click for Part One

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Dec. 13-26, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

I tell ya what, Santa's work is never done. I'm about ready for a long winter's nap here, but before I nod off, there's a whole shitload of Screengrab posts for me to catch up on. And as usual this time of year, it's all about me. You've got your Mexican Santa, your axe-wielding Santa, your skanky Santa, and of course, the usual undignified begging I have to put up with from grown-ass adults (Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like to See, Parts One, Two, Three and Four).

There's enough Christmas content here to choke a reindeer. You've got a sackful of 12 Days of Christmas reviews, from A Christmas Story to It's a Wonderful Life to The Muppet Christmas Carol. You've got a stocking stuffed with YouTube clips, including The Junky's Christmas, The Insects' Christmas and the 40 Inspiring Speeches of Christmas. You've even got the Christmas Unwatchable, The Perfect Holiday. But if you're anything like me, you're completely Christmas-ed out, so here are the posts I'll be curling up with before my long visit to the Land of Nod:

Tom Cruise, at Midlife, with a Freaking Eyepatch

Movie Audiences No Longer Necessary For Movie Success

Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler Pleases Mankind, Annoys Iran

Take Five: The Squared Circle

Scarlett Johansson Blows. Her Nose! Blows Her Nose!

Screengrab Presents: Cinema's Greatest Comebacks (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five)

Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler" Pleases Mankind, Annoys Iran

Phil Nugent — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Mick Foley, who after years of journeyman work and trying out various personas achieved rasslin' stardom with the WWF as Mankind, has gazed upon Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler and, in Slate, given it his professional seal of approval. Foley, who has written a trio of best-selling memoirs as well as some children's books, reports that he had been approached in the past about writing the definitive wrestling movie and that he turned down an offer to serve as a consultant on the Aronofsky film, figuring that if "I felt like having my name attached to a failure... I'd write another novel." But after attending a screening of the movie, Foley was moved by Mickey Rourke's performance as the faded '80s wrestling icon Randy "the Ram" Robinson, honoring the actor's ability to make "the pathetic seem heroic", and impressed by the film's documentary-style atmosphere. (Aronofsky shot with "working independent wrestlers" and shot "at real independent wrestling shows"; as the director mentions in this interview, this level of verisimitude extended even to the scenes at a New Jersey grocery-store deli counter, where the Ram supplements his meager income by donning a hairnet and spooning out potato salad, and where moviegoers can see Rourke, in character, affably messing around with real customers.) "Rourke", notes Foley, "deserves great credit not only for whipping himself into incredible shape—packing 30 pounds of muscle on for the role—but for doing his wrestling homework. Learning the trade at age 52 could not have been easy, but Rourke's in-ring work is good enough to pass this wrestler's sniff test. No one will ever confuse Randy's clothesline with Stan Hansen's, and the scenes surely benefited from careful editing, but much of what Randy did—his flying 'Ram Jam'; a Japanese enzugiri kick—actually looks pretty good. Importantly, it doesn't look any better than it should. His first in-ring scene, with a starry-eyed rookie thrilled just to be in the same arena with a former mat legend, looks realistically rudimentary."

"And everyone involved—Rourke, Aronofsky, independent wrestler Necro Butcher, stunt coordinator Douglas Crosby—deserves credit for creating a memorable midmovie bloodbath, a fight involving broken glass, barbed wire, a staple gun, and other implements." In fact, "Necro Butcher"--who appears in the cast credits listed as playing his "character" under his real name, Dylan Keith Summers--is one of a many-headed ensemble supporting cast that lends the picture a unique flavor. First seen backstage politely negotiating with Randy about just how much the staple gun will be employed in their match, he looks like a balding high school professor who's let his beard get a little out of hand over summer break. Once he hits the stage dressed only in cut-off jeans, he takes on the air of a deranged hillbilly who's come down from the mountains to seek his fortune working in Rob Zombie movies. As much as the film has been touted as a one-man show for the deserving comeback kid Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler would probably be unbearably bleak if not for the comradely vibe it gets from the weirdly lovable crew of hairless muscleheads and tattooed nightmares swarming over its set, all of whom turn out, on close examination, to be orderly professionals who are deeply solicitous of each other's fears and tender feelings. It's a reminder of what an untapped talent bin wrestling may be for casting directors willing to think outside the box. (Mick Foley, whose likable, smarter-than-you-think schlub act ought to make him a natural for the character actor clubhouse, has performed honorably in such TV series as G. vs. E. and Now and Again and recently turned up in a small role in the thriller Anamorph. Terry Funk, who pioneered the extreme-regular-guy persona that Foley updated for the age of flannel, has done good work in small parts in such pictures as Paradise Alley and Road House. And Foley's old wrestling partner Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson may have entered movies as a side of action beef, but in the last half dozen years, he's grown more as an actor than Stallone or Schwarzenegger did in twenty-five. This is a guy who managed to maintain his dignity in both The Scorpion King and Southland Tales!)

The Wrestler leads to Randy's twentieth-anniversary rematch with a burnoosed opponent known as "the Ayatollah"--played by an African-American wrestler named Ernest "the Cat" Miller-- who he met at Madison Square Garden in 1989, and who tries to garrotte him with a flagpole bearing an Iranian flag. (The movie's terrific opening credits sequence deftly places the match in its context as a high point of the trash culture of the '80s, linking Randy to such swaggering ephemera as the hair-metal rock he loves and the outdated Nintendo game that his most celebrated match inspired.) Apparently '80s nostalgia isn't a big concern of Iran's, because it's being reported that "newspapers and websites" in that country have "condemned the film" for this battle royale sequence, which includes a moment when the mighty Ram snatches the flagpole away and breaks it in two. To be fair, I don't know if they get WWF Smackdown in Tehran, and to a people without the slightest grasp of the nuances of professional wrestling, this imagery must seem like a weird and needless provocation. Still, as far as giving the Iranian government and media something to bitch about, it's a long fall from the heady days of 300 and Persepolis. Maybe, in the spirit of the new, post-Bush, Vince McMahon should be dispatched on a diplomatic mission to explain that, if only the Ram's big match had happened a year later than it did, his opponent would have been wearing an Iraqi military uniform and tried to belt him upside the head with cannisters of nerve gas.

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Mickey Rourke Gets Up Off the Canvas

Take Five: The Squared Circle

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:15:00 GMT

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler opens across the country this weekend, and in addition to being hailed as a return to form for the Pi director and a triumphant comeback for shooting star Mickey Rourke, it's also one of an increasingly large number of acclaimed films -- both narrative and documentary -- to deal with professional wrestling. High culture has always had a problematic relationship with rasslin'; it's popularity is undeniable but has always upset the intellectuals of the sporting press, who delight in reminding people that it isn't real, as if its fans don't already know that. It can be lowest-common-denominator entertainment for sub-morons, but it also carries an undeniable emotional heft and a sort of physicalized symbolism that was remarked on at great length by no less august a personage than Roland Barthes, who wrote a famous essay about it for his book Mythologies. And now, years after it was considered an activity significantly less respectable than bowling or roller derby -- the great 'untouchable' sports of the 1950s -- a number of directors have found its combination of artifice and wounded reality irresistible. Here's some of our favorite movies that make reference to life inside the squared circle.

BARTON FINK (1991)

In the Coen Brothers' masterpiece about the art of writing and the way crafting fiction gets in the way of seeing reality, wrestling is used as a metaphor by the highfalutin playwright Barton Fink to symbolize class struggle -- but his inability to complete a simple screenplay in the wrestling genre also serves as a metaphor for his creative blockage. While he seems almost physically incapable of putting words on paper, his flustered producer Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub) delivers a classically bewildered line: "Wallace Beery! Wrestling picture! Whattya want, a road map?" Watching the moral and physical struggles of wrestling in stark black and white on cheap B-picture dailies, Fink still can't think of anything -- and is typically dismissive and oblivious when his neighbor Charlie tries to show him a few moves. John Goodman's Charlie will eventually teach him a lesson he'll never forget.

HITMAN HART: WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS (1998)

Bret "Hitman" Hart comes from what can only be described as one of professional wrestling's royal families. His father, a tough-as-nails Canadian legend and a strict disciplinarian who planned his childrens' careers from the crib, runs one of the most respected schools in the sport, and almost everyone around him -- his brothers, his in-laws, his friends -- are involved in pro wrestling. In this A&E documentary, we follow the everyday life of someone immersed in the game: his strained family life, his true feelings about the sport, and his growing discomfort with the storylines being written for him -- which results in one of the most memorable betrayals, both real and staged, in the modern-day history of wrestling. A little-seen film, Wrestling With Shadows is a sharp, perceptive piece of work that deserves a wider audience.

NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950)

Jules Dassin's legendary British film noir would probably have worked just as well if it had featured boxing -- that violent and often rigged sport so beloved by the makers of moody crime dramas -- instead of professional wrestling. But by having Richard Widmark's needy, creepy, desperate little hustler Harry Fabian wrapped up in the sport of wrestling, we get a number of elements that prove highly rewarding: Herbert Lom's compelling performance as Kristo gives some sense of the strange dynastic quality of some of the great wrestling families, and best of all, we get the unforgettable fight scene between Mike Mazurki as the Strangler and Stanislaus Zybyszko as Gregorius. Both men were actual wrestlers -- but Zybyszko, then an astonishing 70 years old, was from the transitional era when it was actually a legitimate sport. His performance in the scene -- almost silent, incredibly brutal, and absolutely mesmerizing -- has both incredible dignity and repulsive, visceral emotion.

BEYOND THE MAT (1999)

Inspired by Wrestling with Shadows and covering a lot of the same thematic territory, Barry Blaustein's Beyond the Mat had a theatrical run and thus attracted a good deal more attention than its predecessor. Both films shared qualities in common, though, from the alternatingly absurd and tragic lives of those who try to make a living as professional wrestlers to the personal dramas of the ring workers that mirror their gamed-out struggles. (They also share the quality of making WWE head honcho Vince McMahon look like an utter fucking creep, but that's not so hard, since he does the same thing himself every time he opens his mouth.) This time out, the most compelling figures are the ruined, crack-addicted wreck Jake "The Snake" Roberts and his opposite number, the witty, gregarious family man Mick Foley.

SPIDER-MAN (2002)

One of the most successful and enjoyable big-screen super-hero adaptations, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man gets a lot of its juice from the way it envisions Peter Parker's origin story without being boring or disrespectful. Since Spider-Man's is one of the most familiar origin stories in comics, Raimi had to do it just right, and one of the just-rightest scenes is the one where Parker, his powers newly acquired but not fully mastered, decides to cash in on them by taking part in a televised wrestling match. Raimi updates the scene by making it a big, flashy, ECW-style 'extreme' competition, but keeps the sense of fun and absurdity, most especially by casting lovable legend Randy Savage as Spidey's squared-circle nemesis, Bonesaw. To this day, the scene is one of my all-time favorites in any superhero movie to date.

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Screengrab Presents: Cinema's Greatest Comebacks (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

“Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years,” implored L.L. Cool J (shortly before his mother told him to knock us unconscious), raising an interesting point in the endless Hollywood parlor game of career perception: after all, the recent Golden Globe nominations for Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem would seem to mark Vicky Cristina Barcelona as a return to form for Woody Allen...but what then to make of the fact that Match Point, Sweet & Lowdown, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Crimes & Misdemeanors, etc. etc. were all considered phoenix-like returns to form in the Woodman’s prolific (and sometimes crappy) oeuvre? How many times can a person come back if they never really go away?

Sometimes, though (as in the case of pugilist/thespian Mickey Rourke), the weepy entertainment magazine profiles and welcome home parties seem entirely appropriate. After all, the one-time heartthrob used to be a bona fide movie star (and light bondage icon) thanks to hits like Diner and 9 ½ Weeks, and though he’s done interesting work since then in films like Buffalo '66 and Spun, among others, there’s a big difference between co-starring with Eric Roberts and generating Oscar buzz.

Sure, Rourke essentially torpedoed his own career by stomping around like the Pope of Douchebag Village for years and years...but as the auto and financial industries have shown, everybody gets a second chance in America, no matter how bad you fuck up (unless, of course, you’re poor).

So, in honor of this week’s release of The Wrestler, we here at The Screengrab hereby salute...THE GREATEST COMEBACKS OF ALL TIME!

(And stay tuned next week as we ask Santa for THE COMEBACKS WE’D MOST LIKE TO SEE!)

JACK NICHOLSON in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

Though you could be forgiven for not believing it, there was a stretch there where it looked touch and go for the continued health of Jack Nicholson's continued career and reputation. After winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Nicholson jumped head first into a series of high-profile ventures -- The Missouri Breaks, Goin' South (which he also directed), The Postman Always Rings Twice, and, yes, friends, The Shining, which did disappointing box office and was badly mauled by most reviewers. However many fans it's racked up in the years since, the reaction to his performance in The Shining was typical: the conventional wisdom was quickly turning towards the direction that a man once capable of sensitive work had turned into an eyeball-rolling self-parodist, and in a Playboy interview published a year before his 1982 death, the gentle-spirited Henry Fonda criticized Nicholson for having thrown away his career and disgracing his profession. The actor's critical reputation began to recover around the time the magazine hit the stands, starting with his supporting performance in Reds and then with his starring role in the little-seen The Border, but it was Terms of Endearment that set the tone for Nicholson's successful reinvention of himself as a post-counterculture elder statesman who styled himself as a broad but soulful entertainer, someone who was still prone to go over the top but could usually make you love him for it. It could be argued that Nicholson lost something beautiful in the process -- as Anthony Lane later wrote, Nicholson rose to stardom as a man who seemed deeply pained by the state of the world, and sustained his stardom into old age by turning into someone who seemed very pleased with himself -- but it was still an audacious pull back from the career abyss. The role of the pear-shaped horndog Garrett Breedlove won him a second Academy Award, this time for Best Supporting Actor, neatly bookending his time of trouble. It also established that he was smarter than Burt Reynolds, who famously turned the role down to honor his commitment to Hal Needham to do Stroker Ace, which in career terms was like honoring his commitment to show up in front of the firing squad at dawn with a cigarette in his mouth and the blindfold in place.

AL PACINO in SEA OF LOVE (1989)

This entertaining, twisty little thriller made the leap to event status on the strength of its announcement that Pacino had returned to functionability. Pacino had entered into a nightmarishly sustained slump after The Godfather, Part II and Dog Day Afternoon, starring in a series of movies that rank among the very worst of their time (Bobby Deerfield, Revolution), films so thoroughly mediocre and tinny that it was impossible to imagine what appeal they'd ever had for him (...And Justice for All, Author! Author!), as well as Cruising and Scarface, which, for whatever cult status they would come to enjoy, earned him more in bad press at the time than they did in good reviews or box office. Compared to some of those misfires, the relative modesty of Sea of Love was part of its appeal at the time: it was a relief to see Pacino, returning to the screen, after a four-year absence, in a clever little cop opera that gave him a chance to look worn-down and middle-aged but not romantically implausible, enjoying the Richard Price-scripted byplay with such solid pros as John Goodman and Richard Jenkins, and -- an eternal Pacino specialty -- demonstrating that he wasn't afraid to pitch on-screen woo with an actress (Ellen Barkin) who looked as if she could fold him up and stick him in her purse. His spirit refreshed, Pacino was back a year later as Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy, happily gnawing the last traces of meat from the hambone.

CHRISTOPHER LEE in THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001) & STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)

Lee has scarcely stopped working since entering movies in the late 1940s, but his ghettoized stardom in horror movies failed to translate into mainstream screen prominence, and as the decades went by, he seemed most likely to appear in high-profile pictures when the director was someone like Joe Dante or Tim Burton, who'd cut his teeth on Hammer films and felt an affectionate debt of gratitude to the old gent. Which is nice, but self-paroding cameos in Gremlins 2 and Sleepy Hollow do not a comeback make. The first real sign in years that the then-78-year-old Lee still had strapping reserves of energy going to waste came when he turned up in the 2000 BBC version of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, where he was dashingly costumed and looked and moved like a man twenty years younger. But the cherries on top of his career came with his villainous performances as Rings' malignant sorcerer Saruman and the abuser of the Force Lord Dooku -- subtle, George -- which, by drawing on memories of his screen past even as they threaded him into the texture of the two biggest multi-part fantasy series of the turn of the century, honored his career while tying it up with a handsome bow. After which, Lee being Lee, he called his agent and went back to work.

DENNIS HOPPER & DEAN STOCKWELL in BLUE VELVET (1986)

For most of his career, Hopper had led the league in blackballings, being driven out of the acting profession by the director Henry Hathaway, then remaking himself as a director and returning in glory with the 1969 Easy Rider. The box office success of that movie was so bewildering to the studios that Hopper was given a big bag with a dollar sign on it and absolute creative freedom to do whatever he wanted for his next movie as director, which resulted in 1971's The Last Movie...and cue blackballing number two. Hopper would spend most of the next fifteen years reeling from his intake of drugs and drink while working on a string of offbeat projects for European and American maverick directors, ranging from Apocalypse Now and Rumble Fish for Coppola and Wim Wenders' The American Friend to Neil Young's Human Highway, Henry Jaglom's Tracks and Orson Welles' unfinished The Other Side of the Wind. His performances in most of them were pretty unsteady; Hopper seemed to have his notion of artistry boiled down to the actor's willingness to do anything, but nobody ever hesitated to hire Dennis Hopper because they were concerned that he might not be crazy enough. He's said that Blue Velvet, one of a string of films he appeared in around 1986 which also includes River's Edge, Hoosiers, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Part II, was the first job he'd gotten after getting clean and sober, though he apparently almost talked himself out of it by telling David Lynch that he had to play Frank Booth because he was Frank Booth, after which Lynch considered hiding under the table. It's a measure of how impressed Hollywood was with both Hopper's performance and the sheer feat of rendering himself employable that Entertainment Tonight had a camera installed in Hopper's home when the Academy Award nominees were announced on television so that they could record his reaction, it being a forgone conclusion that his name would be among those read aloud. (It's a measure of just how freaked out Hollywood was by Blue Velvet that the E.T. cameras got to record Hopper's momentary confusion when it turned out that he'd been nominated instead for his work in Hoosiers.) Hopper's long shadow also obscured some of the triumph of his Blue Velvet co-star, one-scene wonder Dean Stockwell, who had also appeared with him in The Last Movie, Tracks, and Human Highway. A child actor back in the 1940s, Stockwell had kept his career going into adulthood, winning the Best Actor award at Cannes for 1959's Compulsion and co-starring with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, and Jason Robards in 1962's Long Day's Journey into Night. He went counterculture and turned his back on Hollywood in the late '60s and '70s, then slowly began creeping back with parts in Paris, Texas and To Live and Die in L.A., as well as Lynch's Dune, which he later told an interviewer was the only role he wanted badly enough to screen test for. (The interviewer next asked if he'd care to explain why he'd wanted it so badly. Stockwell replied that he'd rather not.) But it was his performance in Blue Velvet that made him hot enough that he could quit his second job hustling real estate.

JOHN TRAVOLTA in PULP FICTION (1994)

Travolta may have mixed feelings about having had his career resurrected by Quentin Tarantino, given that he's been known to insist to interviewers that he wasn't that far down the ladder when Pulp Fiction broke -- those Look Who's Talking movies made a lot of darn money, thank you very much! -- but most people who cared knew that Tarantino's dialogue and taste in hair extensions restored cachet and hipness to a star brand that had gotten badly devalued since 1981. Travolta cemented his comeback with Get Shorty, a project that he, yes, turned down before Tarantino called him up and advised him to snap to attention. His filmography since then has more than its fair share of stinkers, but it's better remembered now than it was in 1993 that he really is a terrific actor, and he retains the special dignity of a star who came back after being depicted as having been reduced to tending bar in a '70s nostalgia club on an episode of The Simpsons, an episode on which -- the ultimate indignity! -- he didn't even get to provide his own self-mocking voice. And, lest we forget, he did get to name Harry Knowles's site.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

View the Right Thing: Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky Q&A

Peter Smith — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

View the Right Thing: Nerve intern Billy Gray reports on New York film happenings.

Mickey Rourke disappeared from the public eye years ago. And for a half hour, the packed house at the Times Center on December 8th thought he'd pulled a similar act on his talk with New York Times reporter Lynn Hirschberg and director Darren Aronofsky. But he eventually made an entrance in a pinstriped suit and purple John Lennon shades that he wore despite the dimmed auditorium setting. There's serious Oscar buzz for Rourke's turn as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in Aronofsky's The Wrestler. Despite his bad-boy image, Rourke wouldn't blow this shot at career redemption with a missed appearance.

Rourke all but shoved the moderator off the stage as he entertained the crowd with expletive-laden self-deprecation. But mostly Rourke offered effusive praise for the director who inspired what he called the best work of his rollercoaster career. He'd never seen Aronofsky before they had a meeting in the Meatpacking District. ("Uh-huh. I'll always call it the Village.") Despite Aronofsky pulling up on a green bicycle and wearing a yellow helmet, Rourke "could just tell he had a huge set of balls." Initially reluctant to do a wrestling movie with a director "whose only exercise comes from buttoning his suit," Rourke came to see him as "one of the greats who only come around every thirty years. To me, he's the new Coppola."

He needed the help. The years Rourke spent boxing hindered rather than prepared him for the role. Boxers look down their disfigured noses at wrestlers. The broad, theatrical fighting moves of WWE matches are anathema to the hunched stances and quick, intricate jabs required of successful boxers.

Six grueling months of training humbled him. His trainer, a former member of the Israeli army (who would "put that cap thing on" whenever they hit the gym during Shabbat) had to push him up and guide him down the stairs of his TriBeCa walkup. He bonded with the wrestlers he met and learned the business, for better (a backstage camaraderie that brightens the often bleak film) and worse (life-altering injuries, a dependence on "vitamins" that Rourke mentioned with a wink).

Rourke has not seen The Wrestler. He won't for "a few years" He never looks back on his movies until they're long gone from the theaters since he only looks for their flaws. As Aronofsky said, "He is a man who is absolutely impossible to compliment." The actor even tried to leave the stage when Hirschberg announced she would be showing a clip from the film. After the moderator shot him down (perhaps out of fear he would never return) he compromised by sticking his fingers in his ears and closing his eyes.

Whatever confidence Rourke lacks in his performances has not changed the work ethic behind them. A graduate of New York's Actor's Studio, Times called him "one of the few true method actors of today." Aronofsky noted the rewarding challenge of such an understated actor playing a character whose trade demands hamming it up. "Anger is easy," Rourke said of the Ram's wrestling scenes and tempter tantrums. It was the longing and regret called for in scenes between Randy and his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) that took an emotional toll. The actors met on camera. Aronofsky explained that "the daughter is a woman who only knows her celebrity father through imagery and that's just how Evan knew of Mickey." It's the kind of authenticity that permeates the film and has made its star an awards-season frontrunner.

Any praise Rourke receives on his comeback tour is unlikely to go to his head. A member of the audience recalled that Rourke once said in an interview that he could teach anyone to act in fifteen minutes. "Sorry, I was all messed up when I said that," he admitted. "I think had a court date the next morning."

Year-End Roundup: AFI, Boston Critics…and Stephen King?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Here’s your Monday afternoon update on the year-end award and Top 10 list derby. The American Film Institute has released its annual top ten list – I’m not sure I knew the AFI had an annual top ten list, but apparently they’ve been doing this since at least 2000 – and most of the titles are familiar from other such lists. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk and Frost/Nixon are among the predictable entries, but superhero enthusiasts will be pleased to see both The Dark Knight and Iron Man represented. The full list is here, along with the AFI’s top ten television shows, which include The Wire, thank you very much.

The Boston Film Critics had an indecisive year in 2008. They awarded ties for both Best Picture (WALL-E and Slumdog Millionaire) and Best Actor (Sean Penn for Milk, Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler). No big surprises here, aside from maybe the Ensemble Cast award for Tropic Thunder.

The most idiosyncratic Top 10 list to date has to be that of Entertainment Weekly columnist and Screengrab 24-hour marathon inspiration Stephen King. “I'm not trustworthy when it comes to movies… This is almost surely the only 10-best list you'll read that contains not one but two Jason Statham movies.” Indeed, King singles out both The Bank Job and Death Race for praise (he hasn’t caught Transporter 3 yet), along with the craptastic The Ruins. “It could have been ludicrous. Instead, it's unrelenting.” Yes, unrelentingly ludicrous. Anyway, check out his full list here – it’s the scariest thing he’s written in years.

Related:
Roger Ebert Supersizes Top 10 of 2008
Film Threat Unveils Frigid 50 of 2008

Trailer Review: The Wrestler

Paul Clark — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When I first heard about Darren Aronofsky’s latest, it sounded like an odd mix of director and subject material, though the casting of Mickey Rourke in the title role had me intrigued. But the buzz from the fall festival circuit (it took the top prize in Venice) was pretty deafening, so I’ve been eager to get a peek of it myself. And this trailer certainly doesn’t disappoint. Following the disappointing reception for his dream project The Fountain a few years back, it looks like Aronofsky has adopted a more low-key style for this project, with emphasis on character study and the working-class milieu (dig the Springsteen song) over visual pyrotechnics. But what has me most excited is Rourke, who was a fine actor who lost his way for some time there, but has worked his way back with impressive work in films like The Pledge and Sin City before landing this plum of a leading role. Will the Academy take notice? Let the entertainment rags worry about that. It’s just nice to have the big lug back.