The Screengrab : richard burton

Bloody Valentines: The Worst Relationships in Cinema History (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

To paraphrase Edwin Starr: Valentine’s Day! Huh! What is it good for?

Well...depends who you ask: it certainly didn’t work out too well for the poor Roman priest who got himself beaten, stoned, beheaded (and later canonized) for nuptializing Christian couples out of season, nor for any of the other Catholic martyrs named Valentine whose various grisly fates somehow led to the annual tradition of grown-ass men dropping seventy bucks a pop to have teddy bears in boxer shorts with hearts on them delivered to grown-ass women in the middle of winter.

Scholars blame Geoffrey Chaucer for ruining February 14th by linking a bunch of obscure Roman Catholic feast days with the aggravating concept of courtly love, thus stressing out singles and couples alike for centuries to come with unrealistic, unattainable expectations about all the perfect moments of romance we’re all supposed to be having (instead of weeping lonely tears into our popcorn at solo matinees of He’s Just Not That Into You or forgetting to buy a frickin’ card for our significant others and never hearing the goddamn frickin’ end of it).

It should, of course, be remembered that St. Valentine’s ol’ pagan buddy Cupid is the son of both a goddess of love AND a god of war, and thus not all the couples the little bastard shoots with his arrows wind up living happily ever after. Therefore, as a cheery reminder that things could always be worse in this infernal season of l’amour, your friends-with-benefits here at the Screengrab are proud to present BLOODY VALENTINES: THE WORST RELATIONSHIPS IN CINEMA HISTORY!

PROF. IMMANUEL RATH & LOLA LOLA, THE BLUE ANGEL (1930)

A sort of preemptive riposte to the 20th century's literary canon of professors effectively leveraging their intellectual heft for the purpose of seducing their students, The Blue Angel has stuffy Rath (Emil Jannings) falling for cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) when he goes down to waggle his finger in her face and tell her to stop distracting his students. Instead, she captivates and reduces him to a pathetic spectacle, as pathetic in the public's eyes as he is in hers. If Rath had at least a little touch of submissiveness in him, maybe he'd enjoy being constantly humiliated in a sub-dom 24/7 way; as it is, Lola reduces him to a man with no free will. Dietrich's star was made in this first collaboration with Josef von Sternberg; meanwhile, Jannings' performance is frequently looked down upon as an anachronistic acting style from another age. Which actually makes perfect sense for the character he's playing. As a depiction of a May-December, intellectual-emptyheaded, pompous-earthy, and every other kind of mismatch possible relationship, The Blue Angel isn't painful only because it's more conducive to distanced contemplation and sarcastic laughter than visceral empathy. Should you have extra time at work (should you still be employed, in fact), some kind soul has uploaded the whole German version to YouTube, but the embedding has been disabled, so enjoy the trailer above, then click here to watch the whole thing.

GEORGE & MARTHA, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

There may be bloodier couples in the history of cinema, but there are none whose hatred burned brighter. George and Martha – a small-time failure of a college professor and his crude harpy of a wife, played by real-life couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor – may not want to kill each other, but it’s only because dead they would be past inflicting pain, which is all that keeps them going. Considering that Martha speaks of their marriage in terms of total warfare, and George’s idea of whimsical banter is to point a rifle at his wife’s head during a cocktail party, it’s no surprise that this movie has become shorthand for violently feuding couples. This is a couple that’s beyond mere feuding, but whose initial passion has never soured: it’s been transformed into something just as fiery, a loathing built on complete knowledge of, and complete dependence upon, one another. The film shocks us right out of the box by presenting us with a couple whose fury and loathing for each other is deeper than the love in an any big-screen romance; it then shocks us even further by showing how deeply, albeit bizarrely, they care for each other, and how much more profound their relationship is than the seemingly happy couple that contrasts them.

MICHAEL & KAY CORLEONE, THE GODFATHER (1972) and THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

There's a lesson here that a lot of you girls would do well to heed: when your boyfriend runs off to Sicily without a word, gets married to a perfect stranger he met over there about ten minutes after he got off the boat, and then, after somebody sticks dynamite under the hood of the car and blows her sky high, he shows up where you work, again without a word, and announces that, lucky you, he's looking to fill the position of second wife and he's prepared to consider your qualifications -- honey, take a breath. If you feel swayed by his liquid brown eyes and passionate words, try and think about how you're going to feel waking up next to him in a few years, when the face is set off by a toupee like an earth-tone fireworks display and that insinuating voice keeps erupting "HOO-hah!" Then you tell Casanova that as much as you appreciate the offer, you feel that you might be overqualified on account of your ability to count above ten without taking off your shoes. Unless you've got some kind of fetish for having doors slammed in your face.

JACK & WENDY TORRANCE, THE SHINING (1980)

If you've seen The Shining as many times as I have – and there's very little chance of that – you've probably spent some time speculating about the marriage of Jack and Wendy Torrance. How did they meet? What was the attraction? When did they decide to get married, and didn't they have any friends or family to talk them out of it? Some would point to the obvious incompatibility of the brooding, hot-tempered Jack (Jack Nicholson) and the frail, skittish Wendy (Shelly Duvall) as a flaw in the movie, but to those people I would pose this query: Do you know any married people? Because if you do, surely you are aware that for every couple that seems inevitable and perfect for each other, there are at least three that make no sense whatsoever on any rational level. It's easy to blame Jack for the eventual dissolution of the relationship. He is the guy who starts talking to ghosts and running around with an axe, after all. But let's not let Wendy entirely off the hook. She did go along with a plan that entailed living in total isolation with a man who has a history of alcohol abuse and domestic violence (no matter how much she may have tried to downplay it), and she brought her young son Danny into it. At the very least, she's guilty of poor judgment, but at least it all works out in the end.

FRANK BOOTH & DOROTHY VALLENS, BLUE VELVET (1986)

Frank Booth and Dorothy Vallens, the two emblems of maniacal deviance and defiled virtue (respectively) in David Lynch’s surrealistic neo-noir Blue Velvet, may share things...but love isn’t one of them. Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) is a nightclub singer with a daughter and an air of mystery, which – as Kyle MacLachlan’s amateur sleuth Jeffrey peeps after being shoved, post-blowjob, into a closet – is due to her association with Frank (Dennis Hopper). Frank is a sociopath holding Dorothy’s husband hostage so she might sexually gratify him, and the twisted sadomasochistic tryst (replete with helium inhalations and erotic asphyxiation) that Jeffrey witnesses while hiding in that closet may stand as some of the most disturbingly unsettling material ever shot by the peerlessly out-there Lynch. The couple’s relationship ultimately ends when Jeffrey shoots Frank dead, but this being Lynch, the ensuing happy ending is laced with perversion, due in part to the earlier suggestion that Dorothy, conditioned to Frank’s beatings, has been warped into associating pleasure with pain.

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

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

Screengrab Presents: The Worst Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Of All Time (Part Seven)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

And now, the not so good...

A CHORUS LINE (1985)

I’m a theater geek from way back, and so I’ve always had a special place in my heart for A Chorus Line, that old warhorse musical tribute to the nameless show biz gypsies who sing and dance their hearts out not for money or fame but (to paraphrase the show’s unabashedly sincere lump-in-the-throat anthem) simply for the love of their art. And, really, what better way to pay tribute to that altruistic, egalitarian spirit than...um...a cynical vehicle for a non-singing, non-dancing movie star which pretty much banishes the musical’s main characters to, well, the chorus. Michael Douglas hogs the spotlight in a role played by an offstage voice in the stage version, while Sir Richard Attenborough (a director hardly known for intimate chamber dramas) eschews the original's claustrophobic stage door setting in favor of “opening up” the action, restlessly tracking Douglas around Manhattan while the songs and stories of the rest of the characters -- the people the show's about -- somehow keep winding up offscreen and ignored.

OLEANNA (1994)

I've had some disastrous first dates in my day, but it's hard to know what I was thinking when I chose the May 1992 premiere of David Mamet's incendiary exploration of sexual politics Oleanna at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. as a means of wooing the cute blonde of my affections. In my defense, I hadn't heard much about the play when I bought the tickets; I think I was under the mistaken impression that it was about pirates. In fact, it's a calculated but highly effective outrage about a smug college professor who is stunned to be accused of sexual improprieties by a young female student he claims he was only trying to help with her studies. The play is designed to start arguments – it's either about sexual harassment or political correctness run wild, depending on your point of view – so it's not exactly primo first date fodder. (As it happens, it wasn't even my least successful date with this young lady, but let's not even go there.) It was undeniably riveting as a theatrical experience, however – William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon, certainly the Mamet-est pairing imaginable, tore the house down. Two years later Mamet turned Oleanna into a movie, in the process giving no indication that he had any idea how or why it had worked in the first place. Pidgeon was gone, replaced by some nonentity named Debra Eisenstadt. Macy was still aboard, but given such a dull, flat adversary, his professor character now tilted too far to the monstrous side. Everything elliptical and ambiguous in the play had become blunt and obvious; there was no longer anything to argue about. Incidentally, Doubt shares these same problems, but at least it has a striking Meryl Streep performance. That's not to say I'm recommending it as a date movie.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT... (1986)

David Mamet's first big stage success, the 1974 Sexual Perversity in Chicago -- a hilariously cold-eyed and profane take on the mating rituals of young urban types in the age of singles bars, porno chic, and "serial monogamy" -- was a one-act that needed to be expanded on (i.e., padded out) to make its weight as a feature film, and by the time it was green-lighted, America was in the post-sexual revolution "age of AIDS" and newspapers, nervous about legal reprisals from the Reagan-Meese Department of Justice, were reluctant to even run ads with the original title. All of which would have presented a problem for filmmakers with a little integrity, as opposed to the makers of this Rob Lowe-Demi Moore vehicle, which bears less resemblance to any Mamet ever produced than a scaled-down, MTV-friendly St. Elmo's Fire II. The only one of the four main characters who retains some detectable link to his stage version is Lowe's male-chauvinist sidekick Bernie, who, as regrettably incarnated by Jim Belushi, is reduced to bellowing in the background of what's now a conventional young-spuds-in-love movie.

EQUUS (1977)

The British playwright Peter Schaffer is the Maxwell Anderson of our day, a mediocre dramatist who dresses up fancy, fraudulent conceits in fake-poetic language and palms it off as high theatrical art by invoking historical giants and Greek deities. The success of the current Broadway revival of his horse-god bullshit play Equus (starring Harry Potter and his naked pudder) is sad evidence that people can still be suckers for this stuff, though the work fared less well in its movie incarnation, which had the misfortune to be directed by a man -- that famous tough customer Sidney Lumet -- who actually seemed to think it was the literary masterpiece that it keeps screaming that it is. If Lumet had seen through this hunk of junk, he might have been so disrespectful as to try to turn it into a movie, the way John Huston did with Key Largo, the only film based on an Anderson text that remains watchable today. Instead, he was content to stick Richard Burton, fresh from his career-crowning performance in Exorcist II: The Heretic, facing the camera from within a sea of black, and have him hurtle through his monologues as if daring us not to be awed. The ideas he has come to set before us, poor Burton declaims, are "less than worthless; they are in fact subversive." Got it right the first time.

FOOL FOR LOVE (1985)

Burned out on Hollywood, Robert Altman spent most of the 1980s working on filmed plays. Some of these worked out a lot less well than others, but this mounting of what, at the time, was widely held as Sam Shepard's masterpiece as a playwright stands out partly for how perfect it sounds in theory and how thoroughly it goes splat in the execution. Altman employed Shepard to both do the screenplay and star as Eddie, the cowpoke who's meant to have an untamed, fiery, yet sporadic relationship with May (Kim Basinger), who may be his half-sister. But in altering the text of his play (which takes place entirely in a motel room) so that the action rolls all around the motel complex and adjoining highway, Shepard inadvertently revealed how silly the material could be made to seem without the tension produced by two actors going head to head in a tight, enclosed space. And by casting Shepard in the difficult leading role, Altman inadvertently revealed his limitations as a film actor: the poor guy wrote his own part, yet he has trouble keeping up with Kim Basinger.

THE FUGITIVE KIND (1959)

After A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams was understandably eager to write another role for Marlon Brando, and he was also keen to see Brando paired with Anna Magnani, the Italian powerhouse who had enjoyed a great success in the movie version of Williams' play The Rose Tattoo. Sadly, the only time that Brando and Williams did team up again was for this version of Williams' play Orpheus Descending, which all too perfectly captures the playwright's florid, self-parodic side. The opening, with Brando, as Val Xavier (Williams' notion of a modern Orpheus as a tortured blues-playing Adonis with a guitar and a snakeskin jacket) seen alone on screen as he faces the bar of justice hits the wall as soon as it opens out into a grotesque and unbelievable world -- and as Brando has his first scenes with Magnani: not until Godzilla met Megalon would the screen see such chemistry in action. Also doing their reputations no favors are Joanne Woodward in a misguided attempt by a likably grounded, naturalistic actress to enter the pantheon of the movies' all-time great weirdos, and Victor Jory as a rich cracker so rotten that Cape Fear's Max Cady would report him to the Neighborhood Watch Program.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

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

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

DEATHTRAP (1982)

One set, five characters, a couple of twists and a few good, juicy murders: that’s the formula for success in Ira Levin’s puzzle box of a murder mystery about a struggling veteran playwright desperate for a hit. Add a nervous spouse with a weak heart, a gay lover, a weird psychic, a cagey agent and a wall full of handcuffs, pistols and crossbows and you’ve got one of the few stage plays with the power to make audiences scream and jump like a creature double-feature. The movie version wisely sticks to the basics, letting the cat-and-mouse triple-double-cross plotting speak for itself while sticking mostly to the confined but never claustrophobic Long Island home of the plotting protagonist (Michael Caine at his very Michael Caine-iest, having a helluva time). And though certain naysayers here at the Screengrab may say nay, I also give kudos to Christopher Reeve’s performance in the film, which tweaks his goody-two-shoes Superman image while letting him exercise the underutilized mischievous side of his (admittedly limited) range. Meanwhile, Dyan Cannon gives good scream as the wife, and if all that doesn’t win you over, the movie has at least one immortal line, delivered by a snarky critic (Joel Siegel) after Caine’s playwright Sidney Bruhl premieres a hackneyed whodunit nowhere near as clever as Deathtrap: “I'll tell you who done it. Sidney Bruhl done it. And he done it in public."

THE RULING CLASS (1972)

Adapted for the screen by Peter Barnes from his own deeply subversive play, The Ruling Class was sort of a last gasp for the British “Angry Young Man” movement. But its demise was also its salvation: the play – and the subsequent and very successful film – kept in place the elements of class warfare, generational conflict and family drama and turned them on their heads. It replaced rage with whimsy, a tone of rebellion with a sense of absurdity, and an overall tone of Pythonesque lunacy that proved the movement wasn’t entirely devoid of humor. The story of an upper-class family of British aristocrats forced by fortune into restoring as its head a deranged son who thinks he’s the second coming of Christ (played with delightfully silky craziness by Peter O’Toole, in one of his greatest roles), The Ruling Class is, even today, as vicious as it is hilarious. It expands on the play by adding a few memorable characters and trading up in the players (most especially Nigel Green as McKyle, “the Electric Christ”, and the unforgettable Alastair Sim as the bewildered Bishop Bertie Lampton) as well as taking the sets out-of-doors, but what made the stage version so great was its devastatingly funny and fiendish dialogue. Barnes and director Peter Medak are wise enough not to change a bit of that.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

Tim Burton’s first full-blown attempt at a musical is so successful, it’s a wonder that he never tried it before. Without sacrificing the elements that have made him famous – the gloomy atmospherics, the high gothic sensibilities, the manic pace, the deft blend of dark humor and absurd violence – his big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s notorious musical gives him the perfect format. Why? Because musicals are infinitely forgiving of the qualities that, in many of Burton’s other films, can rightly be considered weaknesses: his overblown dialogue, his clumsy grasp of the dynamics of storytelling, his slight characterization, and his love of style over emotional substance. Everything really comes together for him here, and the result is one of the most enjoyable musicals in decades. Dismissals of the lead actors (Johnny Depp as the vengeance-addled Victorian hairstylist and Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter, as the vendor of unhygienic meat pies) as unable to sing at the level expected from a big-screen musical somewhat miss the point: Sweeney Todd is a fiendishly difficult production, its songs and structure much more akin to an opera than a musical comedy, and it contains precious few toe-tappers, so putting the words in the mouths of those not well-suited to the old school of musicals doesn’t sink it one bit.

INHERIT THE WIND (1960)

Almost fifty years down the road, there are a lot of problems with the Stanley Kramer adaptation of the then-controversial play (by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, no relation) about the Scopes Monkey Trial. It’s excessively stagey; Kramer doesn’t bother to open up the set very much, and too many scenes are given no chance to work in the very different medium of film. The casting is problematic; Spencer Tracy and Frederic March are terrific in the lead roles (as stand-ins for Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, respectively), and there are some good supporting jobs, especially by Elliott Reed as the county prosecutor, but Dick York and Donna Anderson as the romantic leads are flat as pancakes, and Gene Kelly playing a thinly-veiled H.L. Mencken is one of the biggest botch-jobs in casting history. It’s unfair, imbalanced, and historically inaccurate. And in a certain sense, it’s simply not as relevant as it once was; Inherit the Wind isn’t about what it’s about, but rather a Cold War narrative about the long-faded dangers of McCarthyism. But there are still some gorgeous speeches in this moldy oldie, and since America is, astonishingly, still debating the rightness of teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools some eighty-odd years after the Scopes Trial, it maintains a relevance its authors couldn’t possibly have anticipated.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

While many directors attempt to open up adaptations of stage plays for the big screen by taking the action up and out, Mike Nichols helps make Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a masterpiece by doing the opposite. Although he does take us outside once or twice, what makes the film so visually arresting is his camera’s perfect pace with the legendary dialogue: instead of going out, it circles endlessly in and around, like a shark. It darts in and out of scenes, whirls around like the heads of the characters after a stinging rejoinder, and creeps in for powerful closeups that reveal faces as ugly as the words they’re speaking. Who exactly gets credit for the screenplay has been the subject of endless disputes, arguments and lawsuits, but really, it’s as simple as going to the source; almost all of the hypnotic dialogue that takes place between timid, repressed college professor Richard Burton and his domineering, disapproving wife Elizabeth Taylor is present in Edward Albee’s original stage play. Not for nothing is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a sort of literary shorthand for viciously feuding married couples: as Burton and Taylor go for each other’s throats, the camera matches them slash for slash, portraying a couple so sick of each other – but so used to each other – that the object of their hatred fills their eyes and becomes all that they can see.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

When Good Directors Go Bad: Waterloo (1970, Sergei Bondarchuk)

Paul Clark — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Of all the great cinematic epics, none is bigger than Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace. Simply put, everything about the film is massive- its budget (upwards of $100 million in 1960s dollars), its production schedule (nearly five years), its cast (tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers were used as extras in the battle sequences), even its running time of nearly eight hours. Yet War and Peace would merely be a footnote in movie history if its largesse was its only notable quality. Reviews of the day praised it not only for its epic scope and impeccable production values but also for its emotional sensitivity and human drama. Even today, War and Peace remains a masterpiece of its kind, and the rare adaptation of a great novel that does justice to its classic source material. For this not insignificant miracle, credit should be given not only to the Soviet film industry but also to Bondarchuk's sure-footed direction.

After the international acclaim for War and Peace, Bondarchuk decided to make a film about The Battle of Waterloo. For most filmmakers, this would have seemed a hugely ambitious project, but compared to War and Peace, a seemingly modest one for Bondarchuk. In order to bring the project to the screen, Bondarchuk received financial backing from Italian super-producer Dino De Laurentiis, and together they enlisted several well-known actors, led by Rod Steiger as Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington. In addition, the film's $25 million budget afforded Bondarchuk the chance to re-create the battle on the same scale as the wartime sequences in War and Peace. But despite these factors, Waterloo was a disappointment both with critics and with audiences, garnering mostly middling reviews and making back less than one-fifth of its original budget, and sending its once-hot director back to the USSR for the rest of his career.

After Waterloo flopped big-time at the box office, De Laurentiis chalked its failure up to the lack of big-money stars in the cast. But while it's tempting to wonder what sort of Napoleon could be played by De Laurentiis' first choice Richard Burton, I'd say that Steiger did just fine with the role. This is especially true in the character's more grandiose moments- Steiger was always a magnificent ham, and Napoleon gave him a chance to cut loose in some entertaining ways that livened up the film. And for his part, Plummer did a capable job as the arrogant upper-class general Wellington.

Likewise, I'd say the battle sequences are as spectacular as advertised. As in War and Peace, the sight of thousands upon thousands of actual humans on the battlefield is still impressive, and still impossible to duplicate with CGI. In order for the sheer magnitude to achieve its intended effect, Bondarchuk films most of the battle in long shots, the better to comprehend the narrative of the battle itself. I also liked Bondarchuk's use of "God's eye" shots at several times in the battle, especially when the English Army forms itself into tight squares to fight off the advancing French cavalry. Had Bondarchuk tried to make a tactics-heavy recreation of the battle a la Cy Endfield's Zulu, Waterloo might have been a classic.

As it stands, the film is a missed opportunity, primarily because he and screenwriter H.A.L. Craig simply can't find a way to successfully integrate his principal characters into the battle. One of the triumphs of War and Peace was that Bondarchuk made us care about the people who were fighting the battle. But rather than exploring the lives of some of the soldiers in any kind of depth, Bondarchuk concentrates his narrative on Wellington and Napoleon and the differences in their approaches to war. This contrast is fairly interesting early on, but once the battle begins the tactic stops working. After all, it's hard to care about two men who essentially stand back and watch as thousands of men march to their deaths.

Today, any notoriety Waterloo may have comes mostly from the rumor that its disappointing box office performance led to production being shut down on Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon. But whether or not this is the case, the bile this idea summons up in some cinephiles is somewhat unfair. After all, hugely expensive epics were on their way out, and besides, Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange instead, so it's not like his career took much of a hit. Taken on its own terms, Waterloo ultimately doesn't work, but there are dazzling sequences that demonstrate what a gifted filmmaker Bondarchuk was, and it's a shame that more of his work isn't available in the U.S. I guess seeing him “go bad” on such a grand scale has made me want to see him make good again.

Honorable Mention: The Top Leading Men of All Time (Part Eight)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:00:00 GMT

DUSTIN HOFFMAN (1937 - )

He isn't on this list so much for his work in the later years, though Ishtar definitely gets honorable mention. It is more for the deliciously anti-leading man stuff he did way back when. He redefined the romantic hero in The Graduate: "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?" So lost and confused, so attractive. No wonder he gets the girl (and her mother). Then there's more heroes against the odds: Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, the somewhat psychotic-seeming protagonist of Marathon Man and, well, Tootsie. Here's to you Dustin Hoffman.

JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO (1933 - )

How goes the plot of Breathless again? Can't remember? Well maybe that is because you were distracted by the dreaminess of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Seriously, the man took the Humphrey Bogart cigarette thing and improved upon it. How many actors can do that? He made this film nerdess get a Jean Seberg haircut and take up a Gauloises Blondes habit when she was sixteen. Unfortunatly she never ended up with Jean Paul in a hotel room. Oh well. At least Pierrot Le Fou is coming up on my Netflix list.

JOHNNY DEPP (1963 - )

There's no sense beating around the bush: for a long, long time, we remained steadfastly resistant to Depp's charms. He was very pretty. He seemed to mean well. It was sweet that Marlon Brando seemed to see something in there that was worth encouraging. We were glad that we did not personally own any of the hotels that he stayed in and that subsequently needed extensive reconstruction. But he had a penchant for moist, self-pitying whimsey, and an unfortunate ability to seem to bring it out of others, as in his first starring role for Tim Burton, Edward Scissorhands. He often looked lost, whether in sausage movies like Nick of Time or meatier fare such as Ed Wood, where he mostly smiled a lot. And when he tried for deeper emotions, as in Donnie Brasco, he sometimes seemed to be dipping his bucket into an empty well. But by 2003, the year that he let Captain Jack Sparrow out of the bottle and appeared in Robert Rodriguez's mostly uninspired, messy Once Upon a Time in Mexico, apparently starring in some livelier, stranger film that he was making in his head, the lad had won us over. Depp may still look a bit like a teen pin-up, but his ambitions as an actor clearly have less to do with romancing or charming audiences than with bringing us images from a different dimension, and after more than twenty years of practice, he's harnessed enough mastery of his physical instrument to his boundless imagination that he does whatever it is he's doing pretty darned well, even if what it is that he thinks he's doing sometimes remains an open question. He puts on as good a show now as any actor of his generation. It's not clear that he can play a straight role and invest in with real emotional power, but the dark, deep tones of his Sweeney Todd -- in many ways his greatest breakthrough yet -- suggest that he's only begun to realize his full promise.

JOHN WAYNE (1907-1979)

Like it or not, the man born Marion Morrison is the face of the cinematic take on American history. He rarely stepped outside his comfort zone of Westerns and war movies, where Man struggled and fought with Otherness and Nature in morality plays writ as large as the myth of American exceptionalism. He had 171 movies under his belt when he died, and most of them aren't great or even good. A lot of them espouse a distinctly conservative political viewpoint. And a handful are absolutely stunning. Let's start with Stagecoach, the movie that Orson Welles used as a template for how to make movies when he was getting ready to make Citizen Kane. John Ford brilliantly used the Monument Valley location to emphasize how tiny the people in Stagecoach were in their environment, and it fell to Wayne, the outlaw-with-a-heart-of-gold, to save everyone from their fates. Now look to Rio Bravo and The Searchers. In the former, Wayne is the tough sheriff intent on standing alone against corrupt power. In the latter, Wayne plays a damaged, obsessive, creepy loner who spends the bulk of the movie on the hunt for his little niece so that he can do her the honor of mercy-killing her after her defilement (or so he imagines) at the hands of Native Americans. That's about as ugly as a plot can be, but it's a testament to Wayne's iconography that he can play both parts without changing the John Wayne-ness of the roles. It's rare to see John Wayne lose, which made The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance that much more meaningful. There's plenty of other great iconic Wayne movies: Red River, Fort Apache, Rio Grande, and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon are among the best. You may hear some ugly words spoken unironically in many of his movies but, well, it's important to remember that the westward expansion in American history isn't just about triumph, but triumph at the expense of someone else. It's possible, maybe even necessary, to appreciate both of these points at the same time.

RICHARD BURTON (1925-1984)

Richard Burton arrived in Hollywood in the late 1940s as the heir apparent to Laurence Olivier, blessed with blazing intelligence, a stern handsomeness, crazy Shakespearean chops, and one of the greatest voices in cinema history. Yet it took years for Burton to find his niche in Hollywood, his gifts mostly wasted in cookie-cutter roles in movies like The Robe and Alexander the Great. But if youth didn’t become him onscreen, middle age sure did. Whereas Burton was ill at ease with uncomplicated heroism, he excelled playing more compromised characters, often opposite his two-time wife Elizabeth Taylor. Night of the Iguana showed him as the ideal antihero for both John Huston and Tennessee Williams, while his work as the dissolute academic George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? afforded him his best co-starring vehicle with Taylor, who according to Burton brought out the best in him as an actor. But best of all is the aging agent Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, in which Burton plays the washed-up operative with a dissolute grace that makes the character unimaginable in anyone else’s hands. In his later career, Burton took an alarming number of “paycheck roles,” primarily to cover the debt he’d incurred from both of his divorces from Liz Taylor. But even then, despite being deep into alcohol issues, he was still capable of the old Burton magic, as in the film adaptation of Equus or his final big-screen appearance in 1984. His career was mired in subpar movies, gossip, and booze -- “a spoiled genius from the Welsh gutter,” he called himself -- but Richard Burton also touched genius in a way that few actors could manage.

WARREN BEATTY (1937 - )

Usually, Warren Beatty is lumped in with the generation of movie stars who emerged during the 1970s -- Pacino, Nicholson, DeNiro, Hoffman. But unlike those men, Beatty’s stardom predates the period: he came of age during the late 1960s, as the classical period of Hollywood was drawing to an end. Perhaps that explains why Beatty was so uniquely able to fit in roles both classical and contemporary. But while Beatty’s rakish charm and lothario reputation might have helped to make him a star, it was his adventurous spirit that kept him there. By 1967, he had acquired enough clout to produce a violent crime drama that became one of the seminal films of the era, Bonnie and Clyde. From there, Beatty worked selectively, collaborating with his equally gifted friends and some of the most talented filmmakers of the day, including Robert Altman in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, in which Beatty gave perhaps his finest performance. Beatty served as producer on many of his films, and writer/director on four of them. Yet these productions were rarely vanity projects -- Shampoo found a dramatic context in which Beatty could wrestle with his public image, while the notorious flop Ishtar memorably cast him against type as the shy songwriting partner of ladies’ man Dustin Hoffman. All the while, Beatty has never shied away from his passions, particularly for liberal politics. Who else would have not only made a film about Communist John Reed at the height of the Cold War but would have taken home an Oscar for it as well? Who else would have taken a story of a Senator who finds his political voice in hip-hop culture? Beatty has laid low since 2001’s misbegotten Town and Country -- far too long an absence for a star as vital as this one. Come back, Warren. All is forgiven.

GREGORY PECK (1916-2003)

With his tall, un-fussy presence, it’s easy to think that Gregory Peck was all about heroes. Certainly, his serene masculinity was well-suited to such manly genres as Westerns and war movies. But if all Peck did in his career was to play the good guy over and over, he wouldn’t be worth mentioning here. Consider the way Hitchcock cast him against type in 1945’s Spellbound -- with a more obviously “crazy” actor in the part it would be easy to dismiss the character as a nutjob, but because it’s Peck we root for him to beat his demons. Similarly, he made a most unlikely Captain Ahab, but after seeing him tied to the side of the white whale, it’s hard to imagine another actor doing it better. Peck was one of those rare stars who could do damn near anything, be it the foreign correspondent who romances runaway princess Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, the besieged lawyer of Cape Fear, even Dr. Joseph Mengele in The Boys From Brazil. But the film that defined him for future generations was To Kill a Mockingbird. As an embodiment of fifties-era manliness, Peck was something of an inspired choice to play the bookish, bespectacled Atticus Finch. And while many of his more conventionally heroic characters are respected by virtue of their strength, Peck imbues Atticus with a forthright goodness that is no less commanding of respect. Other movie heroes may buckle swashes or save the day on the battlefield, but Peck makes Atticus a good guy to whom we can all relate -- the father we had, or wish we had, or wish we were.

And finally, yes...

MEL GIBSON (1956 - )

It may be hard to remember now, but there was a time not too long ago when Mel Gibson -- better known of late for his drunken, anti-Semitic rants and strange directorial inclinations -- was one of Hollywood’s most effortlessly likable leading men. He demonstrated his intensity early in his career, as the enigmatic postapocalyptic hero of the Mad Max trilogy. But it was the Lethal Weapon franchise that propelled Gibson to international superstardom, providing him a mainstream context for his slightly off-kilter presence while affording the breathless women in the audience a good long look at his ass. In the decade to come, Gibson demonstrated his appeal across numerous genres including a solid effort in Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Hamlet. And even when the film itself was unworthy, he rose to the occasion all the same. Look at his work in 1997’s Conspiracy Theory, in which he distinguished an otherwise ordinary thriller with his unhinged performance. Better yet, check out 2000’s What Women Want, which after more than twenty years in the business marked his first lead role in a romantic comedy. The movie’s premise (a male chauvinist pig starts to hear women’s thoughts) is too gimmicky by half, but Gibson singlehandedly salvaged it by making his character more or less the last guy you’d expect to be the center of a romantic comedy -- which, of course, makes it all the more satisfying when he reveal his more sensitive side. Lately, Gibson has taken a break from acting, directing two epics that were shot in dead languages. But we’re happy to see that Gibson is once against stepping in front of the camera, since it’s pretty clear there are many more facets of his talent that he hasn’t shown us yet.

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

Contributors: Sarah Sundberg, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs, Paul Clark

Screengrab's Back To School Round-Up: The Top 15 College Movies (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Two weeks ago, in the spirit of the season, your overeducated friends at The Screengrab kicked off a two-part Back To School tribute with a list of the 18+ Top High School Films. The second part of our salute to readin’, writin’ and massive student loan debt was postponed so we could honor the memory of fallen voice-over king Don LaFontaine with a celebration of the Greatest Coming Attractions Trailers...mini-masterpieces of marketing that make even the worst movies seem like must-see events.

On further reflection, though, I realized the Coming Attractions list maybe wasn’t such a detour from our Back To School tribute after all. For me, at least, the College Movies I saw growing up were a vivid advertisement for all the wild ‘n crazy fun and (more importantly) SEX I’d be having in the hallowed halls of higher education.

But, like any number of flashy preview trailers, those cinematic depictions of frat party free love turned out to be VERY misleading, and I soon learned a liberal arts degree ain’t nothin’ but a one-way ticket to the Blogosphere of Broken Dreams...

...not that I’m bitter, like so many of the characters in the College Movie’s sister genres of Post-Graduate Malaise and Faculty Feuds...all of which await your approbation (it'll be on the SAT...look it up!) as we count down the Top 15 College Movies Of All Time!

ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)

I read an article recently about the way the success of Animal House led to a pernicious slob culture (or something like that...anyone who knows the article I’m talking about can probably correct me in the Comments section). But the gist, if I remember correctly, was the way the “misfits” of Delta House became the obnoxious norm in American society, in the same way that hip-hop and “alternative” music became all-pervasive and, in so doing, lost most of what made it good in the first place. The argument has some merit, I suppose...but in the same way Grandmaster Flash and Nirvana can’t be entirely blamed for all the crapulosity they inadvertently spawned, John Landis’ modern classic at least earns a high spot on this list as the template-setting granddaddy of the modern college film. It's also, it should be noted, much smarter than many people remember, neatly bridging the gap between Baby Boomer self-indulgence and Gen-X ironic detachment. Sure, Tim Matheson’s Otter is a smarmy asshole...but at least he’s an asshole with a sense of humor and a modicum of perspective (unlike those Omega House choads). John Belushi’s Bluto may be a monster of destructive Id...but the movie wisely uses him as a spice, perfect for those moments when revenge and treacley acoustic guitar smashing really ARE the best options. And the ever-delightful Peter Riegert and Karen Allen ground the movie with just enough brains, heart and maturity to remind us that villainous Dean Wormer has an actual point when he notes, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”

COLLEGE (1927) & HORSE FEATHERS (1932)

The greatest film comedian of the silent era, Buster Keaton, and the greatest comedy team of the early talkies, the Marx Brothers, both brought off classics with collegiate settings, and both zeroed in on the same aspect of college life: sports. In Keaton's gentle-spirited slapstick romance, he plays a brainiac who abandons his books in hopes of proving himself on the athletic field so he can win the girl of his dreams. Less interested in fitting in or plucking heartstrings (though they do all takes turns throwing themselves at "the college widow", Thelma Todd), the Marxes head straight for the wheels of power, with Groucho installing himself as the head of Huxley College and devoting his time to trying to staff the university football team with ringers hired out of the local speakeasy. A more inspiring vision of the American higher education system is hard to imagine, though you might find one in Groucho laying out his administrative plan and philosophy of life in the introductory anthem, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It."

RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

Future adaptations – of which there are many coming down the pike – may one day prove us wrong, but for our money here at the Screengrab, the most successful film adaptation to date of an H.P. Lovecraft story is the one that refused to take the material completely seriously. There’s no doubt that Stuart Gordon loves Lovecraft; one look at his oeuvre proves it. But when he made Re-Animator in 1985, he served it up with a wicked dose of black humor that’s entirely invisible in the source material. Of course, Lovecraft’s stories were rife with collegiate atmosphere; the legendary Miskatonic University plays a major role in almost all his Cthulhu-mythos tales. But Gordon updates it to the modern day, making his protagonist a medical-school everyman, his major villain a scheming blowhard with tenure, and his female lead’s father an ineffectual – and ultimately doomed – school administrator. Only the role of mad scientist Herbert West – played by a deliciously over-the-top Jeffrey Combs – seems like a throwback to classic movie horror. The rest of the movie, from its ultra-gory fright scenes to one of the most repulsively memorable sex scenes in modern cinema, plays like a filmed treatise on how to successfully screw with horror conventions. Like Night of the Creeps, it does more than set its action on campus; it takes a decidedly academic (and often sophomoric) approach to its subject, and the result is a modern-day classic.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

There’s nary a student to be seen in one of the greatest college movies of all time. In fact, there’s hardly anyone in it at all: two college professors at a small-town university – one an older history professor, the other a young chemistry professor – and their wives (and, briefly, an ancient couple who run a roadhouse on the edge of town). The history teacher, played by a quietly vicious Richard Burton, and his wife – whose father is the president of the university – despise each other, and over the course of the evening, they will attempt to destroy each other, stopping just short for the strangest of reasons. For Burton and his wife – a poisonous, unstoppable Elizabeth Taylor – the young professor and his agreeable nothing of a wife are nothing more than weapons to be deployed against one another; over the course of a single late night, which begins at a faculty party, and quickly moves on from campus politics to what has been memorably termed ‘the politics of personal destruction’, they will fully understand their status as knives waiting to be unsheathed. Featuring some of Edward Albee’s sharpest dialogue, and Burton and Taylor at the peak of their powers, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has survived countless parodies (it’s virtually shorthand for hateful feuding couples) and the rising and falling stars of its actors, director, and author, and it’s remained one of the most riveting pieces of cinema of the 1960s.

Click Here for Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Yesterday's Hits: The Longest Day (1962, Andrew Marton, Ken Annakin, and Bernhard Wicki)

Paul Clark — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made The Longest Day a hit?: In 1962, World War II was still fresh in the minds of the American people, most of whom were alive when it was being fought. In the intervening years, movies about the war became popular, but seventeen years after the war was over, super-producer Darryl F. Zanuck decided the time was right to make the biggest war movie of all, focusing on one of the turning points of the war- D-Day. Zanuck called upon Cornelius Ryan to adapt his exhaustive book, which approached the battle through many different perspectives, from the top brass on both sides to the men on the ground, and Zanuck even went so far as to have the French and German soldiers speak their own languages for the film rather than having everyone speak English.

In addition, Zanuck enlisted an impressive cast- one that included John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Sal Mineo, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowell, Curt Jürgens, Jean-Louis Barrault, Red Buttons, and an up-and-comer named Sean Connery- to help him pay tribute to the men who fought and died to help turn the tide for the Allied forces. It worked, and The Longest Day became one of the biggest hits of 1962, grossing almost $40 million domestically, trailing only another pair of super-productions- How the West Was Won and Lawrence of Arabia- at the yearly box office.

What happened?: While the American people saw World War II as both a military and a moral victory, the country was soon to enter into a conflict that wasn’t nearly so simple- Vietnam. As our involvement in Vietnam dragged on for years with no victory in sight, both the soldiers and the people at home were souring on the idea of war, especially as images of various atrocities began showing up on television. After Vietnam, war meant something very different to many Americans than it did after World War II, and the war movies that came out of Hollywood reflected this. The morality of these movies became more complex, with less cut-and-dried heroism and more characters questioning the validity of war. This coincided with the fall of the Production Code, and consequently battle scenes became much bloodier and more chaotic. 1998 brought the most violent mainstream war movie of all, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, whose brutal take on D-Day quickly replaced The Longest Day’s comparatively tame recreation of the battle in the minds of most moviegoers.

Does The Longest Day still work?: Surprisingly, yes. Having been raised on violent, gritty anti-war movies, I expected a star-studded classically-styled movie about Normandy to come off as quaint. But it actually holds up pretty well. Much of this has to do with how its story is told- instead of re-creating the battle from one perspective, we see it from many angles- the Allied generals who planned it, the Germans who didn’t quite anticipate it going down like this, the paratroopers who were dropped inland, the men on the beach, the Resistance fighters, even the residents of the surrounding towns. Because of this, The Longest Day becomes less about morality than it does about tactics and strategy- hardly a contemporary approach to the war movie, but a compelling one nonetheless.

Even the star-studded cast worked better for me than I’d anticipated. Often, casting so many stars can be distracting, with the familiar faces taking the audience right out of the action. But here it’s almost necessary to keep all of the different plot strands straight. It helps that most of the big names are playing officers, so we can remember that Mitchum is leading the boys on Omaha Beach, Fonda heading the charge on Utah, Wayne commanding the paratroopers, and so on. Wayne’s presence is key here- he never fought in World War II himself, but he appeared in so many war movies both during and after the war that he fit the Hollywood mold of a soldier more than most of the stars who actually did fight.

One could make a similar claim for The Longest Day- it didn’t exactly look like war, but the classical Hollywood image of what war ought to look like. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a reflection of changing times. At one point in his career, Zanuck famously quipped, “There is nothing duller on the screen than being accurate but not dramatic.” The Longest Day fudged a number of details about D-Day (for example, a key battle takes place at an abandoned casino that hadn’t even been built yet in real life), but from a dramatic standpoint it works. And although it doesn’t correspond to our contemporary idea of what a war movie should be, it’s fascinating as an example of what was once the prevailing popular view of war, from a time when it was easier for us to feel that way.

Yesterday's Hits: The Robe (1953, Henry Koster)

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Since the rise of DVD, the entertainment media has made a fuss over the declining profitability of theatrical exhibition. According to any number of articles on the subject, the increased quality of home viewing has resulted fewer people leaving the house to spend their entertainment dollar. But whether or not this is actually the case, any student of film history can tell you that this is hardly the first time Hollywood has faced this kind of crisis. After all, with the advent of television in the 1950s, Hollywood found themselves having to get creative in order to make money with their movies. In order to compete with television, the studios decided to give viewers what they couldn’t get on their televisions, and the best way to do this was to make their movies big. A number of large-format processes resulted from the period- Cinerama, VistaVision, and the like. Fox’s new format was CinemaScope, and the first film released in this process was 1953’s The Robe.

What made The Robe a hit? Well, CinemaScope certainly had a lot to do with it. The ‘Scope screen was huge, but unlike other new formats such as Cinerama, CinemaScope only required one projector, making it a good deal viable and easier to operate for most theatres. A good number of theatres upgraded to CinemaScope, but even those that didn’t were still able to play the film, as the studio took care to shoot the movie in standard spherical format as well.

But regardless of the shape of the screen, audiences took to The Robe in a big way. Biblical epics were very much in vogue during the early 1950s, not least because the biblical source material made them much easier to swallow for the Breen Office, still Hollywood’s arbiters for onscreen morality. Likewise, audiences responded not only to the lavish sets and costumes, but also to the larger-than-life heroes and villains, uncomplicated morality, and grandiose re-enactments of the stories they’d heard all their lives but hadn’t seen come alive onscreen before. The Robe had all these elements, and combined with the novelty of CinemaScope, the film became the second-biggest hit of 1953, putting millions of dollars in Fox’s coffers and CinemaScope on the map.

What happened? There are certain movie genres that remain popular over time and others who fall out of fashion, and Biblical epics fell into the latter category. No matter how ambitious the films were, they were also almost invariably marked by a tendency toward hamfisted dialogue and storytelling, as well as overripe performances. As the 1950s continued, Biblical epics became simultaneously more expensive and less profitable, and while the genre still produced the occasional hit- most notably The Ten Commandments- for the most part viewers had moved on to other genres. And unlike many other genres, the Biblical epic has yet to come back into fashion or undergo a critical resurgence, perhaps because nowadays we prefer our epics without all that pesky moralizing. But whatever the reason, The Robe is remembered today almost entirely for its status as the first CinemaScope release, rather than for its own merits as a film.

Does The Robe still work? Not really. To begin with, the film’s story isn’t especially compelling. The Robe was based on a bestselling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, but while Douglas’ work had a great deal of appeal for readers, his storytelling was fairly prosaic. Like a number of other films of its kind, The Robe tells the story of Christ through a peripheral figure, this time the Roman centurian Marcellus Gallio (played by Richard Burton) who is present at the Crucifixion and wins Christ’s robe in a game of dice. But after Christ’s death, Marcellus begins to imagine that the Robe is cursed and soon embarks on a mission to discover the secret of the Robe, only to fall in with Christ’s followers. You can imagine where it goes from there- Marcellus begins to believe, he returns to Rome to spread the good news, and ends up becoming a martyr. Not much of a story, that’s for sure.

Of course, Burton’s presence in the lead role makes it easier to take. Long one of my favorite actors, Burton supposedly considered The Robe one of his worst films, but while this is hardly a top-notch Burton performance, it’s always a pleasure to watch him onscreen and savor his amazing voice. Most of the supporting cast can’t measure up- Victor Mature mostly counts on his beefcake physique to carry his performance, Jean Simmons is pretty but little else as Burton’s love interest, and Michael Rennie’s Peter is defined almost entirely by his rockin’ beard. The only secondary player to make much of an impression is Jay Robinson. Robinson’s take on Caligula isn’t in the same league as John Hurt’s in I, Claudius, but he’s still fun to watch, especially when he’s yelling out orders with hammy relish. It’s a campy performance, but it’s better than we get from most of his costars.

Strangely, it’s this lack of campiness that may have contributed to The Robe’s loss of popularity. The Biblical epic is traditionally one of the most campiest of genres, and in particular the saints’n’sinners epics of Cecil B. DeMille can still be enjoyed for their cheeseball value. By contrast, director Henry Koster was a skilled craftsman, but lacked DeMille’s flair for shameless entertainment, and consequently The Robe is too straight and respectable to work in the same way as DeMille’s films. Aside from Robinson’s scenes and Burton’s bits of Robe-inspired madness, there’s not much fun to be had while watching the film. And since the movie doesn’t work as straight drama either, that doesn’t leave us with any other reason to watch it. All that’s left is to be thankful to the film for getting the ball rolling on widescreen filmmaking, which ended up resulting in many movies that are far better and more enduring than The Robe.

Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds: 2 B 2-Together 4-Ever!

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds are getting hitched, and we here at the Screengrab haven't been this proud and excited since our guppies mated! These are two of our favorite people: Reynolds, because he's a likable fellow who's shown himself to be a reliable, capable actor whether he's flexing his chops in bad comedies (Van Wilder), bad action movies (Smokin' Aces), bad horror movies (The Amityville Horror), or bad unintentionally comic action horror movies (Blade : Trinity); Johansson, because she was once in a good movie (Ghost World) without doing it much harm, because Tom Waits isn't too proud to cash the royalty checks, and because every time we run a picture of her, such as this computer-generated simulation of what she'll look like in her wedding outfit, our page numbers go up for some reason. (Also, her name is Scarlett, but she's a blonde! How trippy is that!?) Interestingly, though both of them keep very busy, the 23-year-old Johansson and the 31-year-old cradle-robbing bastard Reynolds have never worked together before. (IMDB lists their only shared credit as 101 Sexiest Celebrity Bodies on TV, which we haven't seen--we're waiting for the opera---but we have a hunch it would stretch the definition of "working together.") But if this marriage is going to work, and I think we can all agree that the thought of it failing is just too morbid to contemplate, then they're going to want to explore the possibility of co-starring vehicles to increase their volume of quality time together. (It worked for Julia and Kiefer, right?) Because the kids must have their hands full with wedding plans--registering at Sears, negotiating to rent out a bowling alley for the bachelor party, trying to get Survivor's Boston Robb on the phone to ask if he'd still lobby for the surf and turf buffet--they might not have a lot of time to flip through scripts, so we've taken the liberty of offering a few suggestions:

THE GETAWAY: Scarlett and Ryan have to co-star in a remake of the married-bank-robbers-on-the-lam thriller The Getaway, based on the Jim Thompson novel. This isn't our favorite choice for them, but after the Steve McQueen-Ali McGraw and Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger versions, we're pretty sure that federal law demands it, so they might as well get it over with quick, like ripping off a band-aid or meeting the in-laws. (Personal to Ryan: just ignore Mr. Johnansson when he demands that you pull his finger.) After watching Ryan's steely gunplay in Smokin' Aces, we suspect that he'll actually be a solid, impressive Doc McCoy, and as for Scarlett, well, we're sure that she'll look shiny and immaculate even while camping out in a rat-infested dumpster. Since the movie will almost certainly blow, the newlyweds can't be judged too harshly for it, which means that the real suspense will be in seeing who gets to play the slimy killer nutjob chasing them and the lovable old goober who gives them a lift at the very end. We propose that the casting director go wide and unexpected with Steve Zahn as the psycho and pluck the viewers' nostalgic heartstrings by hiring Bob Newhart to play the sweet, gabby old thing. Or, if Newhart is unavailable, Robert De Niro.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?: After the scathing reviews The Getaway is sure to earn, Scarlett in particular will be eager to jump in the deep end and show off her acting chops. That's a problem for her, because she can't act, but she can probably hollar, and that's really all you need to do to impress most critics with your range after they've sat through twenty pictures where you pretty much just stood there reflecting light. Playing Martha, the rampaging gorgon at the center of Edward Albee's marital slugfest, gave Elizabeth Taylor the chance to pick up an Academy Award for Best Hollaring by a One-Time Candidate for Most Beautiful Person in the World, so there's a ready-made tradition for Scarlett to tap into here. The husband, George, is supposed to be a prototypical middle-aged American wimp, but since most people's memories of the play are based on the movie starring Taylor and Richard Burton, they think George is English, which means that Reynolds too will have the chance to stretch by breaking out his best Monty Python accent to go with his prop eyeglasses. Throw in Elijah Wood and Bijou Phillipa as the goggle-eyed witnesses to this house of horrors and I think we've got a winner. Don't talk about the boy, Scarlett!

GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY: Tradition and awards are all well and good, but for full mutual career satisfaction, our little Lunt and Fontaine are also going to need to bring home that box-office gold. The ideal thing would be to sign them up for a franchise as crime-fighting superheroes. It isn't until you start trying to come up with possibilities that you realize just how few great man-and-woman superhero combos there have been, especially since Reed Richards and Sue Storm have already been spoken for. But we think that these two will make for a fine fit. Swear to God, we think there's always been something about Ryan Reynolds that's whispered, "Goatee! Robin Hood costume! Bow and arrows!" As for Scarlett, she's sure to rock the black leather slinkywear. The only problem is that there have been rumors of a Green Arrow movie in the works going back to when Kevin Smith was regarded as promising, and the property may be tied up. If it can't be pried free, then we propose going old-school and reviving Nick and Nora, the wisecracking alcoholic marrieds of the Thin Man series, "rebooting" the franchise to give it commercial potential for these sophisticated modern times. As Nick and Nora, Ryan and Scarlett will make wisecracks--or, to better keep with the nature of their talents, Ryan will make them while Scarlett stares at him blankly--chug martinis, and solve crimes. While wearing jet packs!

RYAN & SCARLETT'S XXX HONEYMOON SEX TAPE: A surefire career booster! With an IMAX 3-D sequence to be directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring Christopher Walken and Zac Efron in the musical numbers. To be released in conjunction with the premiere of their new reality series. "It's just called 'Chicken of the Sea' because people like chicken, Scarlett!"

No, But I've Read the Movie: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

If nothing else, you have to give Michael Radford credit for ambition. With nothing more than one minor feature film and a Van Morrison tour documentary to his credit, he somehow finagled his way into tackling one of the most colossally important novels of the 20th century. He wrote the screenplay himself, rejecting all offers of assistance from any number of literary lions; he was determined to film in in London, regardless of the expense; and he decided to release it in the year 1984, cementing it for good in the public consciousness as the definitive version of the classic novel of a totalitarian future. Determined or not, though, Radford encountered endless difficulties in making the film, and it very nearly didn't happen. George Orwell's widow very nearly didn't give him the rights to the property (she'd previously blocked David Bowie from crafting a rock opera -- the record that ultimately became Diamond Dogs -- out of the story), and billionaire Richard Branson, who bankrolled the project, tacked all sorts of demands on Radford under which he bristled until he publicly denounced Branson's meddling at the BAFTA awards that year. But the fact that he attended the BAFTA awards should give you an idea of whether or not the director -- then a 'young buck' at 37 -- managed to realize his titanic ambition.

For all its formidable reputation, though, Nineteen Eighty-Four is, among the 'great books', one of the most filmable. It has a memorable set of characters, a linear plot, a comprehensible storyline that took place both internally and externally, and, for all the feuding that later took place between liberals and conservatives about which of them, exactly, Orwell was complaining, an overall point that was hard to miss. It also contained enough science fiction elements to keep fanboys entertained (though one of Sonia Brownell's conditions for granting Radford the rights to film her husband's novel was that it not contain hi-tech special effects), a juicy sexual subplot, and a richly detailed, yet highly believable, fictional world to be relaized on screen. Despite his onerous conditions, Branson ponied up a lot of money for Radford to play with, ensuring that he could pursue the look he wanted, the feel he needed, and the cast he depended on to make a successful adaptation. If he did it right, Nineteen Eighty-Four could be a huge success. So did he?

WHAT IT HAD: In many ways, the restrictions under which Michael Radford had to work became the elements that made his film succeed. Brownell's demand that the movie not become a showcase for glitzy special effects led him to pursue a low-tech, rattle-trap look for the world of Oceania; everything was dysfunctional, broken down, cobbled together out of pre-war parts. (This same approach would be used a year later to great effect in Brazil.) Branson's demand that his pop stars du jour, the Eurythmics, be included in the soundtrack, infuriated Radford, but their ice-cool techno-pop sounds were actually oddly evocative of the friendly fascism peddled by Ingsoc. And his emphasis on psychology and character over plot resulted in some dynamite casting, including John Hurt as Winston Smith and a cruelly dignified Richard Burton as O'Brien.

WHAT IT LACKED: Suzanna Hamilton, fresh off of having to put up with a smirking Sting in Brimstone & Treacle, sometimes seemed outclassed as Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but that's understandable -- and forgivable -- given that she was surrounded by some major-league heavy hitters of British cinema. Radford's script put a lot of emphasis on tone and emotion, which works quite well and gives it a resonance, especially in the early scenes, that's as timeless as Orwell's novel, but it does wander a bit and gets lost in the forest of plot. And while no one is going to see this movie for an uplifting cinematic experience, Radford does pull off the frankly amazing trick of making the movie even more depressing, dirty and hopeless-seeming than the source material.

DID IT SUCCEED?: It's certainly the movie that launched Michael Radford's career, which, on the balance, is a good thing. It's Richard Burton's final screen appearance, and he couldn't have asked for a better epitaph. And it certainly succeeded in becoming the definitive big-screen version of Orwell's antifascist masterpiece, positively eradicating all memory of the abortive 1956 Edmond O'Brien version from the collective pop-cultural unconscious. But how does it hold up just on its own? It was hugely celebrated at the time of its initial release, but then -- again, partly because of the nasty in-fighting behind the scenes that spilled its way into the press -- it faded a bit, so that when the BAFTAs finally announced their 1984 selections, it barely made a dent. It did fairly good business in the U.S., and was well-received by stateside critics, but it was never considered a masterwork. And while it isn't the pure triumph of imagination and intent that the novel is, it shouldn't suffer by comparison; it did what it set out to do spectacularly well, and with no glaring missteps, it should be reevaluated as one of the more successful literary adaptations of its time.

Yesterday's Hits: It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963, Stanley Kramer)

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

There’s an old critical truism that states that comedy isn’t debatable. In other words, funny is funny. However, like any other genre, big-screen comedy has always been subject to popular taste. Silent comedies were (necessarily) full of physical humor and slapstick. In the thirties, screwball comedy added the element of witty dialogue, often delivered in a rapid-fire style. By the time the sixties rolled around, audiences liked their comedies big. And It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World was the biggest comedy of all.

What made It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World a hit?: Beginning in the 1950s, the movie industry was forced to compete with the immensely popular upstart medium of television. The studios’ most dependable solution was to give moviegoing audiences what they couldn’t get at home. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World had it all- glorious Technicolor! Ultra Panavision! Outrageous gags! And stars? You bet! Sure, you could see Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers on your television set, but if you wanted to see them all together you had to go to the movies. Add into the mix popular stars like Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, and Buddy Hackett, plus a bona fide acting legend in Spencer Tracy, and, to quote another hit of the period, the movie promised “something for everyone- a comedy tonight!” Audiences turned out in droves, making It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World the #2 box office hit of 1963, trailing only Cleopatra, proving that a raft full of stars wasn’t enough to torpedo the Taylor/Burton juggernaut.

What happened?: As I wrote above, big-screen comedy has always been susceptible to the whims of the audience. Star-studded comedy spectaculars like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World enjoyed a comfortable run at the box office for years, but by the end of the sixties they’d fallen out of fashion. Part of the problem was the cost of producing these movies- between the stars’ salaries and the price of the effects and stunts, Mad World’s budget was nearly $10 million, an exorbitant cost in 1963 Hollywood. And while Mad World itself was a hit, other movies like it weren’t so lucky.

Another problem was the demise of the Production Code. Once movies could get away with more risqué material, movies like Mad World and its ilk felt quaint and old-fashioned to many moviegoers. In the wake of films like MASH and the work of up-and-comers like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, Mad World was a relic.

Does It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World still work?: Not really. Maybe you had to have grown up when the film’s comic titans were at their respective peaks, but I just didn’t find It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World all that funny. I’ve always found that the least entertaining movies tend to be failed comedies, since at least in the case of bad dramas, horror movies, etc., you still have something to laugh at. In Mad World the laughs are as sparse as the jokes are obvious. Consider that the opening scene of the movie finds a dying character literally kicking a bucket, and you’ll see the sort of humor you’re dealing with here. And if you think that’s corny, wait until you check out the final gag.

With few laughs to be had, the film becomes little more than a series of loud, overlong stunts and effects sequences, punctuated by liberal amounts of mugging from the stars. Needless to say, unfunny mugging gets old really quickly. After the first fifteen minutes, all I could think of was, “Jesus, I have to spend almost three hours with these people?” I’m guessing that wasn’t the reaction director Stanley Kramer was going for. All of the characters are given one note to play- Merman is domineering, Silvers is a pathological liar, Rooney and Hackett are bumblers, and so on. The film compounds this issue by sometimes pairing off characters with opposing viewpoints. For example, Berle resents the British, while Terry-Thomas hates Americans. Guess who winds up in a car together? Hilarity somehow fails to ensue.

Still, in a cast this stellar, there are bound to be a few bright spots. Tracy, ever the consummate professional, maintains his dignity primarily by underplaying. Among the comedians, the one who fares best is Dick Shawn as Merman’s mama’s-boy son, though more by virtue of his innate Dick Shawn-ness than with anything he actually does onscreen. But the only performer I felt any real affection for was Jimmy Durante as the ill-fated Smiler, who kicks the bucket (literally, let’s not forget) ten minutes into the movie. Not a good sign.

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World had an extravagant budget, and as publicists are fond of saying, every cent is up there on the screen. But to coin a phrase, money can’t buy funny. Yes, the cast is full of stars, but most of them are wasted in thin roles or trotted out for gratuitous cameos. Why get the Three Stooges when you’re just going to have them stand there? Likewise, the set pieces are big all right, but instead of providing a setup and payoff, they just flail around endlessly. It’s not enough for Jonathan Winters to destroy an entire filling station if there's no comedic logic behind the scene. During the film’s climax, when dozen characters are trapped at the end of a fireman’s ladder, all I could do was to keep asking myself why the scene was supposed to be funny. Which is the last question one should ask when watching a comedy.