The Screengrab : naomi watts

Morning Deal Report: Diablo Cody’s Zombie Lament

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Diablo Cody will produce an adaptation of Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, a new novel by S.G. Browne. The romantic comedy “centers on a recently deceased Everyman and newly minted zombie who is having trouble adjusting to his new existence. All that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls,” Variety reports.

John Cusack and Rob Corddry are soaking in the Hot Tub Time Machine. “The script, by Josh Heald, follows a group of guys who have grown frustrated with their adult lives. They return to the ski lodge where they partied as teens to find answers and are transported to 1987 via their hot tub, a bubbly time machine,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Best Actor Oscar winner Sean Penn is in talks to join Naomi Watts in Doug Liman’s Fair Game, a drama about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Penn is in talks to play Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who “watched his wife's CIA status become compromised after he wrote op-ed columns that accused the Bush Administration of manipulating intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.” Weird – it’s not like Penn to get all political.

Related:
Diablo Cody Unwraps "Jennifer's Body"
John Cusack: Political Poet

2009 Movie Poster Preview

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

January and February are the traditional dumping ground for the movies Hollywood has given up on. They weren’t good enough to release at the end of the year to qualify for awards consideration, and they don’t have the commercial potential to secure a coveted summer weekend. So what better time to revive a favorite Screengrab feature of yore, in which I preview upcoming releases I know little or nothing about based solely on their posters?

MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D (Jan. 16)

At first I assumed this was one of those IMAX concert movies featuring a reunion of the seminal ‘80s shoegazer band. Sure, it’s an odd image to promote such an event, but it’s not out of the question that the aging members of My Bloody Valentine would choose to hide behind gas masks. On further reflection, however, it’s more likely that this is an ad for a remake of the ‘80s slasher movie. I still don’t really understand the gas masks and pick-axes, but hey – 3D! How bad could it be?

INKHEART (Jan. 23)

It’s time for another reunion of our favorite buddy movie pairing – Brendan Fraser and crappy CGI effects! You loved them in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, you tolerated them in Journey to the Center of the Earth, and you’ll reluctantly accompany the kids to Inkheart, in which Fraser finds a magical library book that brings unicorns and fairies to life.

THE UNINVITED (Jan. 30)

As I indicated earlier, I have done absolutely no research on any of these movies beyond a careful examination of the poster art. So I have no way of knowing whether or not this is actually a remake of a J-horror film, or if it just wants to look that way. I’m going to assume the plot revolves around frightening vampire children terrorizing the new family on the block. It’s apparently not in 3D, though, so you can probably skip it.

NEW IN TOWN (Jan. 30)

Renee Zellweger is a snooty, power-hungry big city executive who is horrified to learn she’s being shipped off to the Alaska branch. Lucky for her, the quirky small-town residents melt her heart, and she learns there’s more to life than a corner office and double skinny lattes. If you loved Northern Exposure, or even vaguely remember it, you’ll find this comedy safe and unthreatening!

THE INTERNATIONAL (Feb. 13)

I envision a dash of Jason Bourne, a pinch of Eagle Eye-style paranoid techno-thriller, a vast conspiracy, stylish Euro-locations and some visual razzle-dazzle when things get slow. Clive Owen is no doubt an ordinary guy swept up in machinations he doesn’t comprehend, while Naomi Watts is the innocent he drags around until she falls for his roguish charm. You’ll see this on a slow weekend. Later you’ll forget you saw it and put it in your Netflix queue.

Related:
Screengrab Movie Poster Preview
Poster-Modernism

Morning Deal Report: Another Wedding for Anne Hathaway

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Rachel Getting Married is only now reaching theaters, but Anne Hathaway is already heading for the altar again. Hathaway will star in The Fiance for Warner Bros. She’ll play “a woman who cancels wedding plans and breaks up with her seemingly perfect fiance so she can try to figure out who she really is. Her meddling parents try to patch things up between the pair, making it impossible for her to move on,” Variety reports.

Naomi Watts will star as the real-life woman who “famously called President Bill Clinton a ‘weenie’”. No, it’s not The Hillary Clinton Story. It’s My Name is Jody Williams, the true story of “a strong-willed teacher working for a temporary employment agency who left her life in Washington to pursue an unlikely career in global activism. Almost a decade and a half later, Williams was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for leading an international campaign to eradicate land mines,” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Can I interest you in a movie about five people trying to kill Ashton Kutcher? Then get in line for Five Killers, in which Kutcher “will play a former hit man whose life is turned upside down because someone from his past has paid a group of killers to bump him off,” per Variety.

Related:
Anne Hathaway in Wonderland
The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

According to the famous quote, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.

Sadly, Ms. Rogers didn’t make our Top 25 list, but the sentiment holds true for the Leading Ladies who did: after all, like the actors in our recent posting of The Top 25 Leading Men of All Time, the following matinee idols managed to fascinate and captivate over the course of varied careers with astonishing on-screen performances (and off-screen personas)...yet they also achieved their success in a notoriously sexist, looks-obsessed business with a tendency to relegate women to underimagined wife and girlfriend parts...

...or, to quote Goldie Hawn’s actress character in The First Wives’ Club, there are usually three stages to a woman’s Hollywood career: "Ingénue, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.”

But not always, thankfully, as we here at the Screengrab hereby celebrate with our salute to 25 celluloid dames (some of them actual Dames) who defined and redefined our notions of film and femininity...backwards, forwards, up and down, in high heels, cowboy boots and everything in between.

25. NAOMI WATTS (1968 - )

Oh yes, Ms. Watts absolutely kills in the above scene from Mulholland Dr. But she has had a bit of a quality-control problem since, appearing in The Ring and its sequel, 21 Grams, Stay, King Kong, and the unnecessary remake of Funny Games. All of these movies seem risky and high-concept in the abstract, but all of them hedge their bets in some way and fail to deliver on their promise. They’re good enough for what they are, but none of them reach the greatness they suggest. Naomi Watts, however, completely throws herself into her roles. You can see the movie that could have been when she’s on-screen...if you can see anything but her, that is.

24. (TIE) JULIA ROBERTS (1967 - ) & JESSICA LANGE (1949 - )

In The Player, Robert Altman’s poison pen love letter to Hollywood, there’s a running gag about Julia Roberts: every producer pitches every project with her in mind, and even the integrity-bound screenwriter who vows that his “serious” indie film will feature “no stars” eventually gives in, leading to a charmingly self-deprecating film-within-a-film cameo by, yes, Julia Roberts. And though her wattage may have dimmed in recent years (along with the general star power of human actors versus, say, Chihuahuas and Decepticons), she’s still the current reigning champ of modern female movie stars in terms of her career Trifecta of salary (the first female star to crack the $20 million mark), box office clout (over $2 billion + international star power) and industry respect (with multiple awards, nominations and a Best Actress Oscar for her dynamo performance as the titular (get it?) legal clerk of Erin Brockovich). It hasn’t all been hosannas, of course: for all her fame, Roberts hasn’t really given that many memorable performances, and her star turns can range from somnambulant snoozers (The Pelican Brief, Mary Reilly) and romantic comedy fluff (Runaway Bride) to inexplicable appearances in unmitigated disasters like The Mexican and Mona Lisa Smile. But when she’s in the zone, her charisma and presence are formidable: many who loathed Pretty Woman on principle were nevertheless charmed (against their will!) by Roberts’ hooker with a heart of Amex gold, and when she lets herself be likably unlikable (as in her bittersweet chocolate romantic comedies Notting Hill and My Best Friend’s Wedding), she hints at a largely untapped range that may yet blossom in the second half of her already impressive career.

Lange made her movie debut in the 1976 King Kong remake. An actual look at the footage reveals that she was perfectly charming as a sweet but not-too-bright piece of fluff with vague aspirations to stardom, but the movie was used as a piñata by critics, and many of them went so far as to suggest that if Lange was convincing as a dumb blonde, that must mean that she wasn't acting. Badly burned, she didn't appear in another movie until Bob Fosse cast her as some kind of Wilhelmina Agency Angel of Death in 1979's All That Jazz. Her performance there was more kindly treated -- call it the lowered expectations, or Sarah Palin effect -- but it wasn't until she paired off against Jack Nicholson with an unexpectedly fiery performance in 1981's The Postman Always Rings Twice that people began to suspect that they just might have a live one. She followed that up in 1982 with a classic romantic-comedy lead in Tootsie and a performance as the doomed movie actress Frances Farmer (in Frances) that snapped a few necks. Her best work since then has include her performance as Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams, her end-of-the-sisterhood trio in Crimes of the Heart, and her troubled, trouble-making military wife in Tony Richardson's Blue Sky, for which she won an Academy Award. (Sadly, the movie, which was completed in 1991, got caught up in the bankruptcy of its funding studio, Orion, and didn't make it to theaters until 1994, by which time Richardson had died.) Little that she has done since that has been especially worthy of her, though she has appeared onstage in London and on Broadway in Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie. She is currently set to play the ruined society matriarch "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale (with Drew Barrymore as Little Edie) in a movie based on the Maysles brothers documentary Grey Gardens.

23. (TIE) SISSY SPACEK (1949 - ) & JANE FONDA (1937 - )

Sissy Spacek was the amoral girl-on-the-cusp-of-womanhood in three of the defining films of the '70s: Badlands, Carrie, and 3 Women (yeah, you read that right: I said 3 Women was a defining film of the '70s). She could have quit after that, but she moved on to playing maternal figures in the movies. Her eyes look different now. She’s lost the shock that made her seem so delicate and young and precious back then, but that shock was always hiding something else, something weirder and harder to define. Her only recent movie where she's recaptured the shade of her younger self was The Straight Story, in which she played a woman who was a little slow. The Straight Story is also one of the very few movies she’s made that’s worth a damn since 1977, so go figure.

Fonda's offscreen reputation as a Vietnam-era leftist political scold has largely overshadowed her legacy as an actress. If there's any justice in this, it has less to do with her right to express her opinions, however embarrassingly, in what passes for her private life, than with her misguided decision to waste what might have been her peak years as an artist on half-baked scripts that she seemed to select on the basis of whatever political message they seemed to be editorializing, whether it was the legacy of Vietnam or nuclear power or women's rights in the workplace. In the 1980s, she didn't seem to know what to do with herself, and she basically retired after an unpleasant run-in with Vietnam vets who picketed the set of the awful Stanley & Iris, in which she taught Robert De Niro to read. But if there was only a short window of time in which Fonda was an actress first and at the top of her game, what she did during that time would still qualify her for any Mount Rushmore of American movie actresses. She spent most of her first ten years in movies establishing herself as an exceptionally saucy, cuddly comic actress: she's a hoot, and a turn-on, even in Barabarella, one of the ugliest-looking rip-off jobs that a pretentious French twat ever talked his trusting American wife into starring in. When her tobacco-road inflection on the line "Essence of man?" and the scene where she shorts out the orgasm machine failed to give Henry Fonda a fatal heart attack, she went about any daughter's life's work another way, becoming "radicalized" offscreen while pouring all that angry, room-clearing energy into starring roles in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Klute, two of the least sentimental, most hard-edged, beautifully detailed portraits of doomed women of the New Hollywood era (or anytime). Her Bree Daniels in Klute, the New York prostitute who has total control over her clients and zero control of anything else in her life, remains one of the most perfectly executed and daring star performances in movies.

22. JOAN CRAWFORD (1905-1977)

It’s a testament to the sheer power of Joan Crawford’s personality that the mere act of portraying her can wreck a career: Faye Dunaway, once one of Hollywood’s most promising stars, took on the job in the infamous Mommie Dearest, and she was never the same again. It’s a cliché to say that some famous person is less a human being and more a force of nature, but it’s a cliché that was invented with Joan Crawford in mind: once a drifting youngster who only wanted to be a dancer, she got her hooks into Hollywood at a young age (becoming famous as a flapper even before the sound era made her a superstar), and she never let go for a second. In everything from acting to dancing to business to parenthood to sitting on the board of directors of Pepsi-Cola, Crawford insisted on running the game her way, and woe betide anyone who crossed her. For such a stunning screen presence – named by the AFI as the greatest female star of all time! – Crawford wasn’t the best there was at anything. She was an above-average dancer, but not a great one; she had a unique look – all flashing eyes and floating hair – but she wasn’t one of the screen’s greatest beauties; and she could put in some fine performances (witness Mildred Pierce and Strange Cargo for proof), but she was an unreliable box office draw and never one of the greatest actresses of her day. Indeed, as with her doppelganger Bette Davis, she’s often treasured as much for her bad performances, like Sudden Fear, as for her good ones. But there is probably no one in Hollywood history, male or female, who was so commanding, so arresting, so utterly implacable when she was onscreen: Joan Crawford had more presence than anyone who had come before or has been seen since, and if she wasn’t going to take over the world with her acting, then goddamn it, she at least was not going to be ignored.

21. JULIE CHRISTIE (1948 - )

Julie Christie! The rumors are true! Wait, no. Terry met Julie at Waterloo Station every Friday night. Hold it, she wasn’t just the subject of rock songs? Julie Christie could actually act? Yowza. Actually, even if the only movie she'd ever made was McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Julie Christie would still be one of my favorite actresses. But she’s always great, even when the movie isn’t. And despite the openness in her face (not to mention that incredible perpetual pout), she always brings a sense of mystery and intelligence to her roles, giving them a fully rounded life, though we sometimes only see a snippet.

Click Here for Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Hayden Childs, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Trailer Review: The International

Paul Clark — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Sometimes, when a filmmaker with a very specific style takes on a mainstream project, the result can be a superlative take on a genre storyline. So why does this, the latest film from the gifted Tom Tykwer, look so standard-issue? Part of the problem is that conspiracy thrillers are generally pretty similar in their narratives- a corrupt institution with almost unspeakable power, a man trying to expose the corruption, a serious threat to his own life and the loves of those closest to him that inspires him to get really serious, and so on. But what disappointed me about this trailer is how little of Tykwer’s style really seeps through. Honestly, if I hadn’t known going in, I wouldn’t have pegged this as a Tykwer film. Say what you will about Perfume, it was definitely the work of an artist. And while I like Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, so while I’m sure this could help their box-office bankability, I for one would like to see them in more eclectic roles befitting their talents.

Bangkok Ludicrous: The Perils of English-Language Remakes

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:45:00 GMT

This week saw the debut of Bangkok Dangerous, a bizarrely titled remake by Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chun of the bizarrely titled Bangkok Dangerous by Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chun. The main differences between the two films are that the original was in the Thai language; the star of the 1999 original, Pawalit Mongkolpisit, played a deaf-mute with a slightly less ridiculous haircut than Nicholas Cage sports in the remake; and the second version stinks like the underside of a refrigerator.

Alison Willmore at IFC.com, in left-handed honor of Bangkok Dangerous, prepares a list of other English-language remakes of foreign films by the original directors, and in so doing, illustrates that, though the filmmakers are gambling that a U.S. release will net them the fame and increased audience foreign films rarely receive, it's a sucker's bet. Such movies are almost invariably disasters, from Les Visiteurs, a blockbuster French comedy remade in 2001 as the moronic Just Visiting to the pointless reboot of Michael Haneke's Funny Games in 2007. Perhaps the most disastrous of these movies was The Vanishing, a witless remake if George Sluizer's heart-stopping 1988 thriller Spoorloos that completely deflated all the tension and menace of his original. (Sluizer's latest movie was a Rob Schneider vehicle, which is cruel and unusual punishment even for a man who did The Vanishing.)

One of the shocking revelations in Willmore's list is that, despite her excellent reputation as an actress, Naomi Watts is virtually the queen of the junky English-language remake. Not only did she star in the arbitrary remake of Haneke's Funny Games (eating up a big chunk of the $15 million cost of the film it utterly failed to recoup at the box office), but she also played the lead in The Shaft, Dick Maas' dopey remake of his 1983 horror movie about a killer elevator. No, really.

Related Posts:

Trailer Review: Bangkok Dangerous

Funny Games: I Laughed, I Cried, I Puked

The Top 20 Movies About Movies (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Long before Robert Altman gave three quarters of the Screen Actors Guild an opportunity to parody and celebrate themselves in The Player, Billy Wilder managed to corral a Golden Age Who’s Who (including Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper and Cecil B. DeMille, playing funhouse mirror versions of themselves) for a project which, even had it failed, would still have been a worthwhile snapshot of an epochal changing of the guard at the crossroads of Old Hollywood and the dawn of the modern era. But, of course, Sunset Boulevard didn’t fail: this classic dance of death between Swanson’s desperate, deluded has-been and William Holden’s bitterly conflicted never-was received critical hosannas, eleven Academy Award nominations and three wins, a fairly secure spot on the AFI list of the greatest American movies and a mediocre musical adaptation (a sure sign of massive cultural penetration). Box office-wise, the movie failed to click with the hix in the stix upon its initial release, possibly contributing to the movie industry’s ongoing conviction that Middle America has little interest in movies about (A) the movie industry and/or (B) monkey funerals.

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1951)

One of the best musicals ever made, Singin' in the Rain is also one of the freshest self-satires ever to come out of Hollywood. Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen play silent movie stars Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont, whose continuing success as a screen couple is endangered by the coming of sound, which is a problem because of lovely Lina's pronounced vocal resemblance to the sound a cat makes when you feed its tail into the garbage disposal. (I was eight years old. The statute of limitations has long since run out.) As a parody of a narcissistic star's condescending attitude towards the fans, Hagen's adenoidal speech to the "little people" has never been bettered, except maybe for a few real stars at awards shows who didn't know that they were competing with a put-on.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)

David Lynch's love/hate relationship with Hollywood is well-documented, and both sides of the equation are on full display in this masterful fever dream, rescued from network television oblivion after clueless ABC suits deep-sixed the pilot for Lynch's proposed follow-up to Twin Peaks. The set-up could have made for an intriguing continuing series: cheery, naïve small-towner Betty (Naomi Watts) comes to L.A. and finds amnesiac raven-haired beauty "Rita" (Laura Elena Harring) hiding in her aunt's apartment. Betty tries to help Rita unlock the secret of her true identity even as she pursues her dream of an acting career, which takes off after an electrifying audition for brooding filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux). The feature film version of Mulholland Drive turns the entire scenario inside-out, reconfiguring all the characters and events into a nightmare straight out of Hollywood Babylon. In Lynch's twisted vision, the film industry is presented as a shadowy conspiracy of malevolent oddballs. You get the impression this is exactly how Lynch thinks show business is run, and who knows, he may be right.

BARTON FINK (1991)

One of the Coen Brothers' most divisive films, Barton Fink is famously an extended meditation on writer's block, conceived when they found themselves unable to progress any further on the labyrinthine plot to Miller's Crossing. And, indeed, it's a fine treatment of writing and writers, a subject Hollywood gets terribly wrong more often than not. But there's more than one of Joel & Ethan's crippling neuroses on display here: they're also extremely diffident about working within the Hollywood system, and while they may not feel much sympathy with the phony working-class sentiments of the titular playwright, they're certainly not on the side of the impossibly crass, bullying toadstool of a producer, played by Michael Lerner in one of the Coens' finest 'angry man behind an expensive desk' roles. The writers' own vices, from Fink's arrogance and ego to Faulkner stand-in Bill Mayhew's alcoholism and self-pity, may be what sinks them, but studio bosses like Lerner's bombastic Jack Lipnick, Jon Polito's toadying Lou Breeze, and Tony Shalhoub's irritable Ben Geisler are always willing to throw them a boulder. In the end, Fink, trapped by his own unwillingness to listen, finds himself in what is likely one of the Coen Brothers' worst nightmares: locked into an unbreakable studio contract, largely incapable of producing any worthwhile work, and even when they can, unable to find anyone to produce it.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Four & Part Five

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

Remake vs. Original: Kong vs. Kong vs. Kong

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

After marveling at the remarkably rendered 1930s New York of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, I got a mad craving to go back and revisit my first Kong...not the 1933 classic, but the 1976 version I saw as part of a long-ago birthday field trip, sitting uncomfortably close to my grandmother while naked Skull Island native boobies bounced gloriously on one of the big, wide screens of the late, lamented Westgate Cinema in beautiful, balmy Brockton, Massachusetts.

Even more recently, my wife rented the original as part of her own private ongoing Netflix survey course of film history, allowing me to compare all three apes in a cinematic steel cage match. Which film is The King of Kong? Let’s check the scorecard!

THE BEAST:

It’s the eternal question: stop-motion, CGI or a guy in a monkey suit? The original Kong was groundbreaking and iconic. Peter Jackson’s ape was fearsome and expressive and goofed around on an icy pond. And, as Dino De Laurentiis promised vis-à-vis his bicentennial version: “When Jaws dies, nobody cries. When Kong dies, they all cry.” To be honest, this race is too close to call, so I’ll go with the chimp that started it all. Advantage: Original.

THE BEAUTY:

Jessica Lange, God bless her, is automatically disqualified for playing a character named “Dwan.” Naomi Watts delivered a charming, well-rounded performance as Ann Darrow, generating about a hundred times more chemistry with her simian co-star than she did with Sean Penn in 21 Grams. But as good as she was, Dr. Frank-N-Furter didn’t sing about Naomi Watts in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He sang about the one-and-only iconic Fay Wray. Advantage: Original.

THE HERO:

A little Adrian Brody goes a long way for me, and I don’t remember much about Bruce Cabot’s performance as Jack Driscoll in the original (other than it was perfectly fine). But, c’mon...Jeff Bridges on Skull Island in a crazy Amish beard? The Dude abides. Advantage: 1976.

THE SHOWMAN:

Jack Black gave a fine, relatively understated performance as Carl Denham in the 2005 version, and Robert Armstrong totally owns the classic line, “It was beauty killed the beast.” But I have to say I’m partial to Charles Grodin’s oilman turned showman for providing the classic Kong story with a truly hissable villain...plus he’s the only one who gets squashed by a giant ape foot. Advantage: 1976.

SKULL ISLAND:

The 1976 version featured the aforementioned naked breastices, and Kong’s battle with the dinosaurs in Peter Jackson’s remake was insanely exciting, but the original directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack achieved the same level of wonder and excitement with a quarter of the technology. Bonus points for Noble Johnson’s portrayal of the Skull Island chief, the only truly dignified, humane and memorable “native” character in any version of Kong. Advantage: Original.

THE SHOWDOWN:

Kong’s original battle with the biplanes atop the Empire State Building is classic movie magic, and Kong’s battle with helicopters on and around the Twin Towers now sadly packs an emotional wallop it didn’t originally possess, but I could have spent hours drinking in Peter Jackson’s obsessively detailed CGI New York, even without the breathtaking action in the foreground. Advantage: 2005.

And so, after tallying the votes, the winner is...ORIGINAL!

Stay tuned for next week’s exciting Original vs. Remake smackdown (in honor of the release of The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD box set): Sinatra's Eleven vs. Clooney's Eleven!

Screengrab Review: Funny Games

Peter Smith — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:15:00 GMT

Review by Bilge Ebiri

Full disclosure: despite my fondness for the original, I had to leave Michael Haneke's remake of his own film Funny Games before its crazed, depressing finale. Ordinarily, this would probably be a deal-breaker for a review, but in this unique instance, where the filmmaker seems to be deliberately daring his audience to abandon his film, there was something strangely gratifying about bailing on it.

There was also an added dimension to my departure; in effect, I had already seen this film. No, I hadn't technically seen this particular one, with this unique IMDb ID number. But there's no doubt about it: this is the same movie. A wealthy couple (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts) and their young son go up to their fancy cottage. A couple of fey, eerily polite preppies (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) show up to ask for eggs. Then they capture and torture the family. And thus is bourgeois society and the American culture of violence critiqued. (Sort of. More on that later.) Other than the fact that the actors are different (though in effect giving the same performances as their Teutonic counterparts) and the dialogue is now in English, Haneke has rendered his original shot for shot, this time with the full power of an American distributor behind him. (He probably got paid a lot more for this one, too.)

But in doing so, Haneke has done a disservice to his original vision: no longer is Funny Games the demented little experiment in suspense that made it a cult film for those of us who enjoy being abused by our European auteurs. Now, at least if you've seen the original, it feels like some weird old joke that no longer works. Devoid of the surprise element, Haneke's narrative transgressions just feel like tired, empty provocations. Gone is the feeling of having been ensnared in some stifling, terrifying cinematic trap. Now we know there's light on the other side of the door, and we know that we can leave.

Unless, that is, you've bought into the least interesting part of Haneke's thesis (and, arguably, the least appealing aspect of his work in general). The presskit for Funny Games offers up a number of chestnuts about how the film should always have been an American film in the first place, because it was in effect critiquing the violence and bloodlust of American films. By that logic, Haneke has now heroically entered the belly of the beast, like some grizzled Luke Skywalker, ready to fire his neutron bomb into the heart of pop culture's bloodsoaked Death Star. And that you owe it to yourself to see the movie again just to see what kind of effect it has on those evil, evil American audiences. (Oh, and by the way, please give us your money. Pleeease.)

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Haneke's scolding pedantry has always rung false — it's hard to buy into the notion that the director of The Piano Teacher and Benny's Video is in truth some concerned, avuncular softy who makes violent films just to criticize his audiences' fondness for same. If this remake of Funny Games proves insight into anything, it's the degree to which Haneke's work had steadily advanced since the original, gaining resonance and complexity. Better to forget about this tired regression and move on. — Bilge Ebiri

Paste Magazine's Art House 100

Phil Nugent — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Paste magazine has published its "Art House Powerhouse 100", devoted to listing "the people behind the movies we love." The feature is self-consciously designed to serve as an alternative to the other "power lists" that such magazines as Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly get such a thrill out of assembling, with Paste's list striving to determine, "Who are the power players in the world of quality cinema? What individuals and organizations make intelligent, well-crafted movies and have the profile, financial resources and/or critical esteem to attract discerning audiences? In short, we looked for those at the intersection of art and commerce who make independent film the viable and sustainable industry that we’ve come to enjoy." After that buildup, the magazine proceeds to serve up a list of names that for the most part will not be unfamiliar to many people with a passing interest in high-profile moviemaking a little further off the beaten track than say. Transformers. But if few of them have been starving for media attention, most of them are certainly deserving of a pat on the back. The lists of directors (which includes Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Todd Haynes, Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro, Michael Winterbottom, Stephen Frears, and comeback kid Sidney Lumet) and actors (among them Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Laura Linney, Forest Whitaker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Don Cheadle, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cillian Murphy, Ryan Gosling, Johnny Depp, and Javier Bardem), can be found at the website. The hard copy, available at your local newstand, also tots up noteworthy cinematographers (such as Roger Deakins, the hard-working D.P. on No Country for Old Men, In the Valley of Elah, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and producers, as well as listing the magazine's favorite film festivals.

Sundance Roundup: Day 7

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Not surprisingly, the news of Heath Ledger’s death has put something of a damper on the Sundance fun over the past twenty-four hours. Ledger’s former paramour Naomi Watts cancelled all press appearances today in advance of the midnight screening of Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s American remake of his own 1997 film. Meanwhile, some knucklehead decided a post-screening Q&A would be the appropriate time to ask Josh Hartnett for his thoughts on the tragedy. Goodness knows we were all waiting on the word from Hartnett; now we have closure.

In other Funny Games news, the Salt Lake Tribune notes an unusual guerrilla marketing campaign on the streets of Park City. Is it really a good idea to supply potential audience members with eggs before a screening? Why not pass out rotten tomatoes while you’re at it?

Audiences are on a Sugar buzz, says the L.A. Times, crowding into screenings of the latest effort from Half Nelson filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. It’s the story of a Dominican baseball player “recruited to play for a Kansas City farm team, but his overwhelming excitement is soon muted when he finds himself far from home in all-white Bridgetown, Iowa, with no English skills and a naivete about U.S. culture.”

Over at Slamdance, the hot ticket is Paranormal Activity, which is either the next Blair Witch Project, the next Cloverfield, or the next Slamdance movie you’ll never hear about again. According to New York magazine, the audience “screamed at all the right places, then chain-smoked cigarettes outside Slamdance’s ramshackle Main Street HQ in order to decompress.” With any luck, no one interrupted them to ask about Heath Ledger.

Morning Deal Report: Soundtrack by Deicide

Peter Smith — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

New Line is suing to prevent the release of a documentary about Philip Pullman's Golden Compass books, saying it impinges on their upcoming film adaptation. Maybe they don't want people to find out that the books are about killing God. That could definitely put a damper on the holiday loot.

Mark Waters, the director of Mean Girls, will direct the comedy/drama Seven Days, about seven key days over twenty years of a man's life.

Naomi Watts joins the cast of the stalled Angels & Demons.

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well

Peter Smith — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

In the wake of Gus Van Sant's Last Days and A.J. Schnack's documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son comes the announcement that Universal will adapt Charles Cross's Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven. What took 'em so long?

Bruce Dern is directing for the first time, and better yet, Hart's Location will star him and his wife and daughter, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. That is an all-star family right there. We're psyched.

Naomi Watts will star in the remake of The Birds from Casino Royale director Martin Campbell.

— Peter Smith