The Screengrab : scott von doviak

Now Playing At The Screengrab In Exile...

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:12:00 GMT

Andrew Osborne Reviews T.V. Party: The Documentary

Phil Nugent's "Don't Forget The Flaming Arrows!"

Paul Clark Promises Famous Last Words To Return!

Scott Von Doviak Reviews Sons Of A Gun

And more to come at the Screengrab In Exile...stay tuned!

Screengrab Review: "Pontypool"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

When thinking of those who, in our lifetimes, have made major contributions to the shape of pop mythology, let no one forget the name of George Romero. When I was a kid, growing up between the time that Romero's first and best movie, Night of the Living Dead, planted the seeds of his achievement, and the release of its sequel, Dawn of the Dead, cemented it, I spent maybe half my young life watching and reading about horror movies. Partly this was research: at the playground, the jury was still out on whether monsters actually existed, and if they did, I wanted to be ready for them when they stormed the house. Mummies didn't occupy my thoughts to any special degree: they were easy to outrun, and besides, so long as you didn't go violating any Egyptian tombs, it was easy to stay on their good side. Vampires and werewolves were a lot worse, but at least there were clear, set-in-stone guidelines for dealing with them: daylight, wooden stakes, silver bullets, full moons, everybody who dipped a toe into the horror genre knew the drill. But zombies? Now there was a disappointing monster. There weren't many zombie movie classics, and those seemed to be vague on the rules regarding zombiedom. Basically, a zombie was a big, reanimated dead guy with bugged-out eyes and no personality who, under the distraction of the voodoo master who had resurrected him, stagger up and throttle you. No zombie ever looked as if he enjoyed his work, and there was no consensus on how to deal with one, or even if it was the zombie you wanted to target or if you should go over his head and take it up with his boss. Vampires, werewolves, and even most mummies were free agents. Zombies were the hired help.

All that changed thanks to Romero. With two movies and some help from a few enthusiastic Italian imitators, Romero completely changed not just the rule book but the contemporary identity and meaning of zombies in horror movie culture. Voodoo? Fuck that noise. The modern zombie may still not be the life of the party, and he tends to travel in packs, but he's out for himself, and there's no mystery about what he wants. The boy is hungry. Zombies lurch around, using their superior numbers to overwhelm their victims, on whom they plan to dine. The solution to the problem is also simple and direct: bring a shotgun and a mop. Think of it: thirty years ago, when Dawn of the Dead was just being released and Night of the Living Dead was an acknowledged midnight classic but not yet seen as the starting point of a whole damn sub-genre, zombies were monster movie runner-ups on the verge of disappearing altogether on account of political correctness. (It's hard to give a dignified representation of a voodoo priestess.)

By now, we're already at a point where the cliches that Romero created are understood to be part of the shared general knowledge of moviegoers, and are drawn upon by filmmakers who like to insist that they're not "really" making a zombie movie. Bruce McDonald's Pontypool (which Scott von Doviak reviewed here when it played at SXSW, and which goes into release today) isn't "really" a zombie movie, in the same way that 28 Days Later, which (like Pontypool) was about virus-maddened mobs, wasn't a zombie movie, just as Guillermo del Toro's Cronos wasn't a vampire movie, and Mike Nichols's Wolf wasn't an update on Lon Chaney, Jr. But both Pontypool and 28 Days Later are zombie movies in the sense that they play by their own version of Romero's rules, and play on the expectations that the audience builds up based on cues the movies send out that we're in Living Dead territory. (In fact, one of the first not-really-zombies zombie movies was Romero's own The Crazies, which came out between the first two installments of his living dead saga and which established some durable new cliches of its own.) Neither Pontypool or 28 Days Later is really imaginable without Romero's movies, and Pontypool in particular depends on the precedent set by Romero's movies to keep the audience with it for the first half hour, when the prolonged wait for something to happen is actually made more tolerable by the fact that we have a pretty good idea of what that something will look like when it does happen.

Pontypool is set almost entirely in a small radio station in the title locale in rural Ontario, and for most of the first half there are only three characters onscreen: the morning DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), his beleaguered producer Sydney (Lisa Houle), and the fresh-faced young techie Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) who's just back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. (And when circumstances take one of them out oif the picture, a new character appears out of nowhere to ease the transition.) Grant--described by New York magazine reviewer as "an egghead incarnation of Don Imus" (which I think may be a non-litigious way of saying a version of Don Imus that isn't a smug, lazy scumbag)--is an aging, haggard-looking "fight the power" type who likes to gas on about "developing a relationship" with his listeners by challenging them (i.e., pissing them off) and whose catch phrase is "taking no prisoners!" He has apparently been reduced to manning the mike in this jerkwater burg because of his past indiscretions, and the first half of the movie includes the makings of an entertaining comedy about this self-styled provocateur's attempts to adjust to his new surroundings as Sydney fills him in on the sorrows and family connections of the nobodies he's making fun of on the air and lets him in on the local trade secrets, such as the fact that the "Sunshine Chopper" from which the station's traffic reporter delivers his broadcasts is actually a Dodge Dart parked on a hill.

That all pretty much goes out the window as the suspense plot develops. Snug and isolated in their studio, Grant and company begin to pick up reports--from the traffic reporter, from phone-in callers, from a BBC reporter trying to get his own handle on the story--that a deranged, gibbering mob is tearing around Pontypool, tearing people apsrt with their bare hands. As the descriptions of the carnage going on outside the studio grew more detailed and grisly, evidence mounts that there's a virus at work that spreads through the English language; people who succumb to it are particularly susceptible when uttering terms of endearment, such as "honey" and "sweetheart." Conceptually, Pontypool might be a blood-soaked spin-off of William S. Burrough's zen koan "Language is a virus from outer space" (and also, maybe, one of Alan Moore's old comics stories for 2000 A.D.) The script, by Tony Burgess, is based on his novel Pontypool Changes Everything, but it would be a bang-up radio play. Given the War of the Worlds set-up and the metaphorical use of spoken language--and the use of a breakdown in language as a sign that a character is about to start slavering blood--it's kind of amazing that Burgess didn't shape the material with a radio play in mind. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that radio plays are one of the few forms that now have less cultural cachet than Canadian-based midnight movies.

Bruce McDonald, whose credits include Roadkill, Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, the Ellen Page showcase The Tracey Fragments, and the TV series Twitch City, has always struck me as being sort of like the Canadian Alex Cox. Like Cox, he's a self-styled hipster weirdo who picks his projects to serve his image, but unlike Cox, he's not so infatuated with himself that he makes the mistake of thinking that he's made a wild, provocative movie just by signing his name to it and hanging out on the set while the cameras roll: he does make a little effort to entertain. His greatest success here is with McHattie, who has a great radio voice and who, with his gaunt features and frame and black cowboy hat, is an indelible image of the motor-mouthed hipster malcontent who's just found himself on the wrong side of sixty. The scenes in which McHattie's Grant, on the air and flying by the seat of his pants, valiantly tries to string together the hazy reports coming his way into a coherent picture for his listeners add up to a stirring depiction of professional competence that may be more exciting than the reports themselves.

But the downside of McDonald's relative modesty as a director is that it costs him something in both energy and conviction. And his pursuit of cool at all costs can be self-defeating: a scene in which Sydney undercuts the news of a character's death with a cheap sick joke destroys the emotion that the movie has achieved without replacing it with anything stronger. The last third of Pontypool, which is when it's most like a conventional zombie-attack picture, is the weakest, and it devolves into a real mess. The film will be most satisfying to those who like their horror movies to wear their "conceptual" timber on their sleeve. (When a character says, "Talking is risky, and talk radio is high risk," he might be reading the Director's Statement on camera.) It's "interesting." But it's never scary, and I'm not enough of an avant-guardist to see that as a good thing in what's billed as a horror movie.

In Other Blogs: Shoot Out the Lights

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

I should probably use this final installment of In Other Blogs to suggest alternatives to the Screengrab for our fans about to go into withdrawal. (This is it folks, the last day, closing time, 50% off all posts, everything must go!) But let’s get real – there’s no replacing the Screengrab! Oh, if you must keep up with ongoing developments in the world of cinema, I suppose there are some alternatives (and I remind you to bookmark this page, which has a whole passel of ‘em). Instead, I’m going to take one last opportunity to pay tribute to…well, us.

At The Phil Nugent Experience, Phil Nugent takes aim at Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. “Sutherland's performance, which has thoroughly redefined his image and career, shows just how irresistible the self-pitying enforcer act can seem when it's done to a crisp. In his first several years in movies, Sutherland was a weird-looking Brat Pack also-ran; as his youth started to slip away, his most striking roles, as a big bad wolf of a serial killer in Freeway and as the exposition merchant in the sci-fi fantasy Dark City, made it look as if he might be turning into the new Dwight Frye. His transformation into a TV action hero seemed a mighty unlikely development, but as soon as he turned into Jack Bauer, he developed a new, flinty authority that he'd never shown before. The few movies he's appeared in since 24 launched were in and out of theaters pretty quickly, and probably it helped that, as a TV star, he suddenly had smaller screens to fill, but it's possible to fail even at that: compare him to Christian Slater in My Own Worst Enemy if you want to know how thoroughly it's possible to belly flop in both media.”

At Silly Hats Only, Paul Clark announces his plans for what might qualify as the anti-Unwatchable. “For a long time, I’ve had a goal of watching every title represented by the Criterion Collection, and it occurred to me that if I didn’t set about to watch and write about every Criterion title I haven’t seen, I’ll never do it. And while it’s not the most original goal for a cinephile, I’d say it’s a worthy one all the same.”

At The AV Club, Leonard Pierce has the goods on The Goode Family. “I've always been precariously on the fence about Mike Judge. I thought Office Space was half of a brilliantly subversive satire that degenerated, in in its second half, into a predictable caper movie with a strangely reactionary message; Idiocracy, likewise, had some killer comic observations but couldn't seem to present them with much coherence in the end. So here we are with The Goode Family, Judge's new animated sitcom, and its promise to take a poke at political correctness. This all would have seemed very timely in, say, 1994, or even when King of the Hill debuted in '97.”

At From Here to Obscurity, Hayden Childs continues his alphabetical journey through his music collection. “The Cramps - Gravest Hits EP, Songs The Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle, and Bad Music For Bad People. Man! What can I possibly say about the Cramps that hasn't been said a million times already? People who enjoy the kind of music called rock & roll love the The Cramps. Some critics apparently consider Bad Music For Bad People to be a watered-down version of a better best-of that was released in England, but for me, well, that's the Cramps album that I first heard at 15 years old, and that's THE Cramps album for me. Besides all these other ones, I mean.”

At Slant, Nick Schager checks out Night in the Museum 2. “Commotion ensues, most of it functionally but unexcitingly executed, including an into-the-artwork sequence that pales in comparison to a similar bit from Loony Tunes: Back in Action.”

At The Ol’ Blog Shop, Andrew Osborne spends Memorial Day in America’s Heartland…Somerville, Mass. “But, really, for me it was all about the Shriners, or whoever those guys in the Aleppo fezzes were, and there were scores of them, possibly hundreds, taking up easily half the parade with their flags and weird Arab trumpet noodling and fake goatees and turbans and their candy-tossing...and forget about tiny little cars: the Somerville Shriners had tiny little 18-wheelers, not to mention tiny golf carts, tiny buggies, pop-wheelie clown cars, horses, horse cars, Segways and a trailer broadcasting a Shriner quartet as they sang “Yankee Doodle went to Baghdad riding in a Humvee” into dangling CB radio handsets.”

At Scott Von Doviak (someone please come up with a better blog name for me), I look at some recent movie Crime Scenes, including Gone Baby Gone. “Here are four words that inspire very little confidence when they appear on a movie screen: ‘Directed by Ben Affleck.’”

And remember, your one-stop shopping destination for keeping track of the ol’ Screengrab gang is Screengrab in Exile. Don’t stop believin’!

Th-Th-That's All Folks: THE SCREENGRAB CURTAIN CALL!

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 03:00:00 GMT

So, th-th-that's all folks. Enjoy the last precious remaining hours of the Screengrab while you can, and be sure to look for us here at Nerve.com, in the archives at www.thescreengrab.com, at our new blog the Screengrab In Exile, and also...

Andrew Osborne:
Look for me at The Ol' Bait Shop, The Ol' Blog Shop, New England Screenwriters, and if The Meat City Beatniks ever comes to a theater near you, be sure to buy a ticket!

Scott Von Doviak:
Check out Scott's blog, his tweets, his book Hick Flicks and the continuation of his journey into Unwatchable madness!

Leonard Pierce:
Look for Leonard at A schediastic hootenany and the Onion A.V. Club!

Phil Nugent:
The Phil Nugent experience rolls on at The Phil Nugent Experience!

Hayden Childs:
Read Hayden at From Here To Obscurity, and check out his book, Shoot Out The Lights!

Paul Clark:
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to write for the Screengrab for the last two years or so. In the future, I’ll be devoting more of my energy to my blog Silly Hats Only, where I’ll be carrying on a few of my favorite Screengrab traditions- including the reincarnated Famous Last Words, starting in June- and exploring some new ideas as well, I hope. I’ll also continue to be involved in The Muriel Awards, and you can follow me on Twitter under the username “opalfilms”. Be seeing you.

Nick Schager:
Nick can be found at Lessons of Darkness, Slant magazine, IFC News, Cinematical, and on Twitter.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg:
For more Sarah go to: http://www.sarahclynesundberg.com/

Vadim Rizov:
Vadim lives on at The House Next Door.

Lauren Wissot:
Lauren's work can be found at Beyond The Green Door.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten & Eleven

Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Ten)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:45:00 GMT

The Worst:

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

Some comedian, possibly Seinfeld, did a routine once that perfectly captured my own pubescent experience during the final moments of The Empire Strikes Back, that sinking, slowly dawning realization that...holy shit! To Be Continued? Is THAT where this is heading? Are you fucking kidding me, Lucas? You’re gonna make me wait THREE YEARS to find out what happens to Han Solo? Last time around, the big finale was the Rebels blowing up the Death Star and this time it’s...Luke getting a new hand? As an adult, of course, I eventually learned to accept years-long gaps between, say, seasons of The Sopranos and Lost (and...uh...girlfriends), but way back when, it seemed like George Lucas was pulling a cruel prank on his faithful fans. (Little did we freakin’ know...) (AO)

RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)

Bad:

Worse:

My esteemed colleague Andrew Osborne said of this last week: "And then, to make matters worse, Egghead suddenly materializes at the grand finale Ewok rave with the shiny, happy ghosts of Yoda and Ben Kenobi...a scene Lucas inconceivably managed to make even worse decades later by adding Hayden Christensen." Yessir, this movie was the first clue that George Lucas had no idea how to separate his best impulses from his worst. What can I say? I was 11, and I knew that bouncing Ewoks singing a creepy-awful song while the ghosts of Jedis past grin at Luke was a miserable way to end things. Then, when Lucas got around to taking a crap on his legacy with the three prequels, suddenly we had to deal with whiny ol' block of wood Hayden Christensen taking scary ol' Egghead Vader's place, while the Ewoks sang a New Age anthem that left me longing for the relative greatness of the "Yub Jub" song. Hey, Lucas, here's an idea: you put Lawrence Tierney under that mask and then have the Rebels celebrate their victory on a planet where the inhabitants aren't covered in fur. Because when the furry people in your universe get together to celebrate, everyone loses. (HC)

DR. T & THE WOMEN (2000)

Critics were unkind to this movie, but I'm willing to cut Altman some slack. It's not that bad. Even as it states that Dallas society forces its women to interact with constant near-brainless patter, it suggests that underneath each perfectly coiffed hairstyle is a powerful intelligence trapped in a socially empty cage. But it all falls apart at the end. After the above clip, when Dr. Travis' daughter runs away from her wedding with her maid of honor, everything in Dr. Travis' life cruelly falls to pieces and he drives off in an increasingly frantic rain, which suddenly turns into the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, and then he's deposited in Big Bend, where he helps a young woman deliver a baby. I mean, I get the point: somewhere over the rainbow, Dr. Travis is practicing the business of bringing life into this world for the needy rather than assisting rich women with their petty neuroses. But Altman asks too much of the viewer with his sudden left turn, and it doesn't make a lick of sense. (HC)

PLANET OF THE APES (2001)

Tim Burton was in a bind when it came to ending his remake or reboot or re-imagining or retardification of Planet of the Apes in 2001. After all, he couldn’t go with the original surprise ending and expect it to wow audiences all over again. At the same time, it’s Planet of the Apes, so it needs some sort of mind-blower of a twist ending. Ultimately, Burton decided not to spend too much time thinking it through. Wouldn’t it be cool if the astronaut played by Mark Wahlberg manages to get back to his own time…only when he looks up at the Lincoln Memorial, he sees the face of his ape nemesis Tim Roth? And then a bunch of ape police show up with guns? Whoa! It was a nifty image to be sure, but could it possibly be explained by the events leading up to it in the movie? Attempts were made to justify it, but none by Tim Burton. "It was a reasonable cliffhanger that could be used in case Fox or another filmmaker wanted to do another movie," Burton claimed on the DVD commentary. Sadly (or not), no one has taken on the challenge…although as you’ll see in the clip above, some enterprising young people did make an attempt to improve on Burton’s finale. There may be some plausibility issues here, as well. (SVD)

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE (2003)

Run, Kate Winslet, run! Look to the sky and scream, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" And then, ohmigodIdidn'tseethatcoming, it turns out that the anti-death penalty activist framed his own death so that they could prove that the Texas legal system gives innocent people the death penalty. No! And the smoking gun (or, in this case, unsmoking gun) was always right there, just beyond her fingertips! No! No! No! Well, actually yes. As in Alan Parker's repulsive Mississippi Burning, which suggested that change came to Mississippi in the 1960s through the work of white FBI agents rather than the brave, but inconveniently often non-white, people of the Civil Rights Movement, here Alan Parker tries to suggest that an anti-capital punishment advocate in freakin' kill-happy Texas has to frame himself to prove that the Texas justice system occasionally puts innocent people on death row. Jesus, a thousand times no. Here's Roger Ebert from his review: "let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein." I might have gone with Idi Amin, but I think you get the point. (HC)

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)

Since we spoke earlier of how a great movie earns its ending by putting us through so much with the characters we feel they deserve their closing moments, let’s look at a movie that goes about it entirely the wrong way. There’s no question that the Lord of the Rings trilogy earns a good ending; the cast of characters we know and love absolutely deserve a great moment of closure after all that we’ve been through with them over the space of three entire movies. The problem is, Peter Jackson doesn’t give us one ending; he gives us a dozen. There are so many moments of building climax and rest that it starts to seem like a joke when the credits don’t actually roll through one false stop after another. Sure, Jackson and his writers were working with an incredibly long source trilogy, and to their credit, they did cut out plenty; it was just all the wrong stuff. For a director who seemed all too willing to hack bits out at the beginning of the series, he seemed downright reluctant to lose anything at the end, no matter how tedious it became; and even then, some of the choices he made were dubious. Why did we lose the Harrowing of the Shire – one of the more gripping parts of the final novel – so we could have ten minutes of the hobbits bouncing around on a feather bed? For a movie that gave us scene after scene of excitement in the early goings – for that matter, for a movie whose every installment left you begging for the next movie to come out – the endgame left even the most diehard fans longing for the credits to roll.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THE GRADUATE (1967)

As I noted in our list of the Top Ten Best Movies Of All Time, The Graduate is pretty close to perfect, right down to its classic finale. All by itself, the climactic rush to the altar made our list of great “race-against-time” scenes, and the sequence where Dustin Hoffman’s character pounds the church window and wields a crucifix against the older generation to rescue his lady love from bland suburban mediocrity still feels cathartic today. But the final moments truly seal the deal in one of the greatest ambiguous fade-outs of all time as Katharine Ross’ Elaine stares at the man she’s chosen, suddenly wondering what exactly comes after “happily ever after,” while Hoffman’s Ben stares straight ahead, the lost expression of the opening scenes returning to his face as he clearly wonders, “Now what?” Considering Charles Webb, the author of the source material, spent the next several decades in cash-strapped obscurity, tending a clinically-depressed lady with painted-on eyebrows named Fred while trying to get a Graduate sequel off the ground, maybe Ben and Elaine had reason to worry. (AO)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The ending to Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece continues, forty years after its release, to baffle and intrigue, its post-light-show sights – a white room; Keir Dullea’s astronaut seeing himself, as an elderly man at a table and dying in bed; the monolith’s sudden reappearance – forming a tantalizing riddle. In its final, mesmerizing image of the star-child, 2001 does what no subsequent Kubrick film did, presenting a hopeful vision of the future, one in which man is finally free (at least until the forthcoming dystopia of A Clockwork Orange) of his base animalism. (NS)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Let me first make it clear that I’m very much aware that the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange was originally published with a final chapter that never saw the light of day in the United States until Rolling Stone featured it in a 1987 issue. That’s when I first read it, and at that point I’d already seen the movie approximately 783 times. (Stanley Kubrick claimed he’d never seen the missing chapter before making his film, but he had – he just didn’t like it.) Burgess’ ending finds the cured Alex out for another night on the town with his new droogies. But he’s not really up for it – he’s getting too old for this shit, and entertaining thoughts of domestic bliss. I never felt like I needed to know this about him. “I was cured all right” strikes the right note for me – it doesn’t preclude the possibility of Burgess’ outcome, after all, but if we’re going to give this guy his free will back…well, we better be prepared for anything. It’s hard to imagine that final chapter fitting in cinematically with the world we’ve been immersed in for over two hours, and as Kubrick later demonstrated when working with Stephen King, he was never one to let the author’s intentions get in the way of his own worldview. (SVD)

STROSZEK (1977)

Werner Herzog has never been interested in sticking to convention, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the strange and wonderful Stroszek. Beginning with a fairly formulaic setup -- a trio of misfits journey to America in search of a new life -- Herzog then proceeds to spin out his story in the most unexpected of ways. After hard times hit, the film courts cliché as the title character (played by Bruno S.) and his elderly pal Clemens Scheitz decide to hold up their bank, but when the bank is closed they rob the neighboring barber shop instead to the tune of a whopping $35 and use it to go shopping before Scheitz gets arrested. From there, it gets even odder. It’s the images that Herzog finds to conclude his tale that make this a classic, as we witness the sight of the stolen tow truck, now set ablaze, driving in circles around the parking lot with nobody at the wheel. So bizarre is the spectacle that it’s easy to miss Bruno climbing onto the ski lift with his shotgun, followed by the sound of the shotgun firing. Then, of course, there’s that dancing chicken, one of the most famous images in Herzog’s entire oeuvre. According to Herzog, the entire crew hated the damn chicken, but it so fascinated him that he felt the need to journey 600 miles from his principal filming location in order to shoot the final scene in the rest stop where the chicken danced. What does it all mean? Herzog, to his credit, leaves it to us to decide. (PC)

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

No Country For Old Men denies audiences the grand gesture and the blood. Strange to say about a film that features a killer who is less a man than a force of nature, but it's true. When Llewelyn first comes upon the scene of the drug shootout, the violence is over. When the bullets finally find Llewelyn, it happens offscreen. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stumbles into a potential conflict with Chigurh, the killer has melted away. Carla Jean even dies offscreen. It's a bloody movie, sure, but it studiously avoids giving audiences the easy conclusions that they may want. This is especially true at the end of the movie. Sheriff Bell has retired, giving his wife the peace of mind she wants, and he describes a couple of dreams he had to her. Both feature Bell's father, who he told us in the introduction was sheriff before him. In the first, he's lost money that his father gave him. In the second, his father silently passes him, carrying a fire, and Bell knows he will make a fire to protect and warm him. That's one of the beautiful things about this movie: even as it denies audiences their basest impulses, it gives them something unexpected. Here, the language is one of author Cormac McCarthy's major concerns, the existential quest for a moral code in a fallen world. The Coen brothers like to subvert expectations, and it's fair to say that this jolt of philosophy wasn't at all what audiences were expecting. But it was a far greater gift. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

REPO MAN (1984)

Mike18xx, the nice fellah who posted the clip above, notes in his YouTube comments that “Seeing the ending won’t actually ‘spoil’ the film if you haven’t seen it before,” which is absolutely true. The plot of Alex Cox’s first, best film (involving aliens, car thieves, secret government shenanigans and the search for a very special 1964 Chevy Malibu -- what Mike18xx rightly calls the best McGuffin in film history) isn’t nearly as important as the overall vibe, a pleasant reminder of a more innocent pop culture moment when punk and indie weren’t just corporate flavors and Emilio Estevez was actually kinda badass (although, judging by a recent feud unwittingly instigated by our own Scott Von Doviak, it seems both Cox and the Mighty Duck still have at least a little piss left in their vinegar). Plus, like all the best endings, Repo Man features an effective curtain call of characters and themes, as well as a memorable epigraph for my own particular hipster doofus generation: “The life of a repo man is always intense.” (AO)

ZABRISKIE POINT (1970)

Love him or hate him -- and there are plenty of cinephiles in both camps -- it’s hard to deny that nobody could end a movie quite like Michelangelo Antonioni. With plenty of wonderful conclusions in his work, it was hard to confine ourselves to just one Antonioni film (or even two, as we ended up doing), but ultimately we couldn’t possibly overlook the finale of this, his most critically-savaged work. Taken as a whole, Zabriskie Point is a scattershot vision of late-sixties America -- sometimes visionary, sometimes ponderous, often both. But even if you aren’t a fan of the movie, the ending packs a wallop. Sure, it’s somewhat obvious what Antonioni’s up to here, blowing up a gaudy “modern” house that has intruded on the natural majesty of the desert, even showing the explosion from multiple angles for extra emphasis. But it’s how he does it that turns the scene from sledgehammer symbolism to transcendent cinema (besides, this is relatively subtle compared to Antonioni’s other proposed ending, which involved an airplane writing “Fuck You, America” across the sky). As Antonioni shifts the film into some of the slowest slow-motion the cinema has ever seen in order to capture the explosions in exhaustive detail, he manages to exact his cinematic revenge on consumer culture -- watch as he blows up a television, a refrigerator, even a loaf of Wonder Bread -- while simultaneously transforming the destruction into something beautiful, with an assist from a modified version of Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.” For lack of a better phrase, it’s pure cinema. And if that’s not good enough for you, there’s the notion that even a director as art-damaged as Antonioni knows sometimes his hardened audiences just want to watch stuff blow up real good. (PC)

PLANET OF THE APES (1968) & BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

Sorry to ruin it for you, but the planet of the apes? It was Earth all along! Charlton Heston sure feels silly now. But not as silly as he’ll feel when he finds himself the prisoner of underground mutants in the sequel. Now he’s really had enough, and it’s hard to blame him for overreacting. I’ve told this story before, but one more time before they turn out the lights: Having had quite enough of talking apes and telepathic mole-people, Heston unleashes a mighty cry of "You bloody bastards!" and plunges onto the detonator with his dying breath. And you can pry it from his cold, dead hands, if you can find them, which you can't because, indeed, the planet explodes. Or as the abrupt final line of narration has it: "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." Hey, thanks for coming to the show, ladies and gentlemen! Drive home safely! It's an ending that provokes laughter in your modern sophisticated audience, much to the bafflement of a gentleman who was sitting behind me at a revival house screening some years ago. "I dunno what everyone's laughing at," he muttered. "It's gonna happen." (SVD)

WEEKEND (1967)

By the end of the ‘60s, it was clear to everyone that Jean-Luc Godard was through fucking around. He was using cinema less as a means of communication and more as a weapon, but how deadly serious he was about deploying that weapon didn’t become clear until the final scenes of his dizzying film Weekend. The circumstances are brutal enough; the bourgeois couple we’ve followed throughout the film, cheated of their inheritance, resort to murder and end up in cahoots with a pack of radical revolutionaries with a taste for human flesh. But throughout Weekend, Godard was operating on a higher level: it’s full of meta-reference, and the director makes no bones about his characters being tuned into their own artificiality at every juncture. He planned it not as a mere statement, but as a command: this art form, he said, is dead; leave the theatre not to discuss it, but to seize and tear down. It was a powerful message, and a prescient one a year before Paris exploded into a nearly miraculous revolution. But even in that atmosphere, only Godard would have had the balls to give Weekend its famous ending: a simple title card reading “END OF CINEMA/END OF WORLD.” (LP)

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY (1966)

Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Leone's, aren't concerned with Western realism, but the myth of the West, which they blow up like Greco-Roman gods. This might be the most iconic and expressionist movie ending outside of, y'know, German Expressionism. The clip above starts after Tuco and Blondie find the graveyard, with the camera spinning through the graves as Tuco races through the rows, looking for the right name. Then Blondie forces him to dig. Angel Eyes appears and there's the first double-cross: the grave Tuco is digging up has bones rather than money in it. The Mexican standoff. The second and third double-cross: Tuco's gun is empty and Blondie didn't write anything on the rock. Tuco digs at the right grave, but as soon as he strikes the gold, there's the fourth double-cross: Blondie has hung a noose over his head while he was working. The camera stays with Tuco as Blondie rides away, and we all watch him disappear, thinking, "wait, that one is The Good?" But he returns and frees Tuco, calling back to an earlier scene of camaraderie between them. It sounds like a story from The Odyssey even as I describe it here. If there had been such a thing as a Mexican standoff when Homer was writing, I'm certain that Odysseus would have found himself at one point of the triangle, one step ahead of the others. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)

Okay, first of all...how cool is it that John Waters was the officiant at David “The Wire” Simon’s wedding? But, of course, a certain brotherhood between the seemingly unlikely pair makes perfect sense, given their shared warts-and-all love of Charm City, a.k.a. Bodymore, Murderland. And before he became pop culture’s deviant bon vivant uncle, Waters also shared the hustler rebel aesthetic of Simon characters like Omar and Bubbles, conceiving Divine’s infamous shit-eating grin at the end of Pink Flamingos as more of a calculated publicity stunt than an attempt to pervert the fabric of decent society. As the director says in his book, Shock Value, “I knew I only had $10,000 to work with, so I figured I had to give the audiences something no other studio could dare give them even with multimillion-dollar budgets. Something to leave them gagging in the aisles. Something they could never forget.” Mission accomplished. (AO)

NASHVILLE (1975)

Robert Altman’s clearest claim to having made the Great American Movie has an ending that pulls off the neat trick of seeming both surprising and inevitable. It’s another of those movies that absolutely earns its ending, with the exhausting and exhilarating feeling that we have followed its many fascinating characters to the logical extreme of their stories; and when they all gather for a political rally in honor of the unseen candidate Hal Philip Walker, it seems inexorable, in light of what we’ve seen before, that there will be an attempt on his life. But the gunshot, when it finally comes, finds an unexpected target – and, what’s even more unexpected, the movie doesn’t end there. Instead, it throws out a new wrinkle, as the little-known striver Barbara Harris, in one of the show biz tropes that is rarely handled so masterfully, steps up to calm the crowd and forge her own legend singing “It Don’t Worry Me” as the fallen Ronee Blakey is carried away. The song turns into a transcendent chant for all of America as Altman’s camera, which has captured absolutely everything, goes the only place it has left to go: up, out, and away. (LP)

THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976)

What was it about 1976 that made losing acceptable at the movies? Was it a Vietnam hangover? The famous malaise Jimmy Carter spoke of? There must be some significance to the fact that the two most successful sports-themed movies of the year – Rocky and The Bad News Bears – ended with the heroes on the losing side. As losing goes, however, the Bears do it right. A thrilling rally in the bottom of the ninth that falls just short. A round of beers in the dugout. And of course, Tanner’s immortal response to the fake rah-rah good sportsmanship of the privileged: “Hey, Yankees! You can take your apology and your trophy and shove it straight up your ass!” Words to live by. (SVD)

DROWNING BY NUMBERS (1988)

For someone so relentlessly postmodern, director Peter Greenaway has often proven himself a master of what Barthes called the “proairetic sequence” – the movement of the narrative through signifiers related to plot and action. Although Drowning By Numbers is as beautifully designed as any of his less narrative structural work, Greenaway creates an almost tangible, physical need to see the plot (involving the murder by drowning of three men at the hands of their identically-named lovers) all the way through to its conclusion. He does this through a trick that’s elegant in its simplicity: almost every scene features a number, starting with 1 and increasing by one in every scene, going all the way up to 100. Greenaway cleverly snares you into an addiction for spotting the next number before you’re really even aware what he’s doing, and by the end of the movie, the number 100 shows up as the typically brilliant Michael Nyman score reaches its frantic crescendo and the story reaches its grim but inescapable conclusion. (LP)

BEFORE SUNSET (2004)

I covered this for a previous list of romantic moments, so pardon me for repeating myself: It's a safe bet that few people who watched backpacking Gen X-ers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) spend a memorable night together in Vienna in 1995's Before Sunrise ever expected to see a sequel, much less wait nine years for one. When that follow-up finally did arrive in 2004, it could hardly have been confused with a traditional movie romance. As befitting a Richard Linklater film, their belated reunion in Paris is all talk — talk about missed connections, the impermanence of youth and the mysteries of love. Jesse has a flight to catch, so we're always aware of the ticking clock — that is, until the sublime final moments, when the urgency melts away to the appropriate tones of Nina Simone singing "Just in Time." Delpy does a shuffling little dance. Hawke sinks into the couch with a silly grin on his face. And we all learn that the most romantic words of all are not "I love you" — they're "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane." (SVD)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

So, in case you somehow missed the news, our beloved little blog will be ending at the end of the month, meaning THIS (sniff...sniff...) will be the very LAST of Screengrab’s Thursday lists.

Yet, in the classic words of Supersonic (heavy-rotationed into my very DNA by the good people of alternative radio), “every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end,” which means that while this blog will be pushing up daisies soon, you’ll still be able to get your fix of the Screengrab All-Stars at our new blog, Screengrab-In-Exile, featuring new (if somewhat less frequent) writing and links to writing from the usual gang of idiots...we may even pop up from time to time hereabouts writing for Nerve.com. Meanwhile, all your favorite Screengrab posts will be preserved in amber for future generations at www.thescreengrab.com (and stay tuned for the end of today’s list for links to all our individual websites).

Anyway, I have to say I’ll miss the ol’ place, and I’ve really enjoyed organizing and contributing to these lists. Heck, I’ll even miss getting called a douche by anonymous internet hecklers.

But all good things must come to an end, so once more for auld lang syne, let’s fade out together with THE BEST & WORST ENDINGS OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Last week we saluted Slim Pickens’ whooping death trip aboard a nuclear bomb, but of course, that was only the beginning of the end of Dr. Strangelove. There’s no pie fight as Stanley Kubrick had originally planned, but we do get to see the great minds of the War Room contemplating the bright side of nuclear annihilation (10 women for every man!), the continuation of Cold War tension through the end of the world and beyond, and of course, the song we hope will be playing in your head as the Screengrab fades to black: We’ll meet again…don’t know where, don’t know when... (SVD)

THE PASSENGER (1975)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s ennui-drenched cinema reached something of an apex with The Passenger, the tale of a reporter (Jack Nicholson) who, while in Africa on assignment, assumes a dead stranger’s identity to escape the soul-crushing disaffection of his own life. It’s a beguiling pseudo-noir that culminates with one of cinema’s most awe-inspiring shots, a 7-minute single take – in which the camera magically passes through a room’s iron-barred window and then rotates 180-degrees – that expresses the film’s faith-and-philosophy-tinged portrait of the folly of dreaming about escape. (NS)

CARRIE (1976)

The shock ending of Brian De Palma's horror classic provides a hint as to how De Palma got the reputation in some quarters as a rip-off artist: it's a direct steal from the ending of John Boorman's Deliverance, from just four years earlier. But it's also a clear indicator of how De Palma, in the quarters that matter, earned the reputation of a master director: his execution smokes Boorman, whose scene was a bit of a botch. By contrast, De Palma's makes audiences jump as high as anyone has ever managed without installing ejector seats in the theater. (PN)

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Just a quick word to acknowledge how clever Spielberg was to have the Ark of the Covenant, the holiest of holies, the subject of all of this strife and death, crated and boxed away in an anonymous government warehouse, presumably one of thousands of forgotten treasures. That's a wry sense of humor there. (HC)

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000)

The best movie endings are the ones that come at great cost, the ones that make us feel that we’ve lived with these characters and that their eventual fate, whatever it is, has been earned. The greatest recent example of this is Ang Lee’s wuxia masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After a truly epic sequence of events, changes of scenery and direction, life, death, moral redirection, and any number of other twists and turns, the young lovers Jen and Lo, hiding out at the Wudan temple, fondly recall their time together in the forbidding, barbaric deserts, where their love had first blossomed. “Make a wish, Lo,” says Jen, in one of the most perfect deliveries of a movie line in modern memory; “I wish that we’ll be in the desert together again,” he replies. Jen then silently hurls herself off the edge of the temple, into the clouds below, suspended first and then flying, calling back to a legend they’d discussed during their desert idyll as Tan Dun’s majestic, gorgeous music plays us to the credits. It’s one of the most romantic endings imaginable, and guaranteed to raise a lump in the throat of all but the coldest viewer – a scene that’s truly earned. (LP)

25TH HOUR (2002)

For most of Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, Monty Brogan (played by Edward Norton) is shown coming to grips with his upcoming incarceration -- saying goodbye to his loved ones, trying to determine who sold him up the river, even asking his best friends to beat the snot out of him so he won’t look like an easy target for prison rape. But just when Monty has more or less accepted his fate, the morning he’s scheduled to make the trip up to prison, his dad James (Brian Cox) meets him for the trip with an alternative -- to escape and start a new life. Over the next ten minutes, James paints a beautiful picture of this way out -- go West, find a little town in the desert, get a new identity, and so on -- and with Terence Blanchard’s elegiac score playing behind him, the plan is as tempting as it is far-fetched. But there’s a steep price for this escape, as Monty could never return to his old life. And so, the central theme of the movie snaps sharply into focus -- the choices we all must make in life. James is prepared for the possibility of never seeing his son again as long as he knows he’ll be okay, but is Monty ready to give up everything he knows for freedom? As we see him passing all those New Yorkers he once railed against, now smiling at him and seeing him off, we wonder if he can sacrifice his past to save his future. And just when he’s come to the end of his imagined life, all of a sudden he snaps back to his real one, back in the car on the road to destiny, and Lee’s camera lingers once again on Norton’s face. The choice is yours, Monty. (PC)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

Unwatchable #33: “Glitter”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:00:00 GMT

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

Barring a last minute call from the governor, this is the end of the line for Unwatchable here at the Screengrab. We made it two-thirds of the way through the 100 worst movies ever made…but is there any hope of finishing this very important project? The answer may surprise you.

Ladies and gentlemen, Unwatchable lives! Well, sort of. I am barely proud…er, I mean very proud to announce the launch of Unwatchable: The Blog. As soon as I’ve loaded all the links to the existing Unwatchable posts here at the Screengrab, I will resume the countdown at this new blog. But I need your help! Now that Nerve is cutting off the funding for this worthy endeavor, I am reduced to begging you, the Unwatchable reader, for the support to see it through to the bitter end. Sure, I’d do it for free if I could, but these psychiatry bills aren’t going to pay themselves. So if you’ve enjoyed this feature and would like to see more, why not drop a buck or two in the Paypal tip jar over at the new place? Hell, I’ll even accept corporate sponsorship if you have the connections. Exxon’s Unwatchable…it has a nice ring to it, no?

There’s still some unfinished business here at the Screengrab, however, so let’s get right to Glitter, the 2001 musical starring Mariah Carey, who won a Worst Actress Razzie for her performance as fictitious diva Billie Frank. Billie’s rags to riches story is a familiar one, but given the story’s setting in the go-go New York of the ‘80s (not to mention the movie’s reputation as a camp classic), I had reason to hope for some Velveeta-smooth cheesy goodness. Unfortunately, Glitter is more dreary than gooey, and nobody likes dreary cheese.

Billie was raised by her alcoholic, torch-singing mother, until mama had one drink too many and Billie had to go live at the orphanage. At least it was a fun orphanage where Billie met Louise and Roxanne, still her best pals years later when Billie is dancing in a club and catches the eye of would-be music mogul Timothy Walker (Terrence Howard). Walker hires the trio as background vocalists and dancers for his diva project Sylk (Padme Lakshmi), but when he gets a load of Billie’s superior pipes, he turns the volume down on the atrocious lead vocals and faster than you can say Milli Vanilli, Billie’s voice is coming out of Sylk’s mouth.

The ruse doesn’t last long, and soon Billie is discovered by up-and-coming DJ/producer Dice (Max Beesley), who promises Walker $100,000 in exchange for the rights to Billie’s solo career. Backed by Dice’s Casio beats, Billie is soon on her way to superstardom and falling in love with her producer. As played by British-born Beesley, Dice has to rank among the top five worst romantic leads in motion picture history. He’s a sleazy mook in a wife-beater, gold chains and a Ratso Rizzo accent, but we’re supposed to think he’s a tortured artistic soul because he has a marimba in his apartment. Come on, that’s the oldest trick in the book!

Dice never does get around to paying off Walker, which leads to his tragic end just as Billie is mounting the Madison Square Garden stage for the biggest concert of her career. She stops the show for a big, emotional speech about never taking your loved ones for granted, and I suppose this is the moment that secured the Razzie for her. It’s true that she can’t act, but neither could Prince in Purple Rain. He had star quality, though, and you couldn’t take your eyes off him, but the same can’t be said for Carey here. In fact, when her two satellites played by Da Brat and Tia Texada are onscreen, they out-charisma her to such a degree that Carey seems to vanish from the screen…except when she’s decked out in her satin shorts/baseball cap/pigtails ensemble. Then you sort of stare at her like she’s E.T. or something.

Previously on Unwatchable:
34. House of the Dead
35. Santa With Muscles (unseen)
36. Daddy Day Camp
37. Bad Girls from Valley High
38. Chairman of the Board

OK, that’s it! Remember to bookmark the new home of Unwatchable. For updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

The Last Morning Deal Report

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

A word of warning: just because this is our last Morning Deal Report at the Screengrab doesn’t mean Hollywood is going to stop announcing ridiculous projects. You’ll just have to find out about them somewhere else. I wish I could say we’ve saved the best for last, but we can only work with what they give us.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz will reunite for James Mangold’s Wichita. It is not the story of a lineman who’s still on the line. “The script has been through many machinations, but the most recent drafts were done by Scott Frank, with Mangold currently fine-tuning the script with Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island). Two-hander has several action scenes. Cruise will play a secret agent who pops in and out of the life of a single woman,” Variety reports.

Kevin Smith has found another pair of dicks. “Seann William Scott and Adam Brody are joining Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Warner Bros.' A Couple of Dicks,” Smith’s new buddy action comedy, per The Hollywood Reporter. Smith did not write the script, which is by script Robb and Mark Cullen, and “follows a maverick cop (Willis) and his partner (Morgan) who, while tracking a valuable stolen baseball card, tangle with a memorabilia-obsessed gangster and rescue a Mexican beauty who holds the key to millions in laundered drug money.”

Also, there will be another Batman movie, another Star Trek, another James Bond, and at some point, probably another King Kong remake. Save us the aisle seat!

“Drag Me to Hell” (Scott’s Take)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Judging from last night’s screening of Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi’s long-awaited return to the horror genre gets the sort of reaction you’d imagine the director was after: screams of terror dissolving almost instantly into self-mocking laughter at having fallen for the director’s tricks yet again. This is a movie that goes bump in the night – if you want your date jumping into your lap, it’s the perfect choice for a night out. But let’s not get carried away equating its modest charms with the demented energy and deranged inventiveness of Raimi’s early work, most notably Evil Dead 2.

Actually, “charms” is not a great word choice, unless you find the prospect of a wizened Gypsy removing her rotting dentures in extreme close-up charming. (The Hungarian-American community is probably not going to be thrilled with the presentation of their culture on display here.) Said toothless crone is about to be thrown out of her house after missing several mortgage payments, unless she can convince loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) to extend her deadline. Normally, the kind-hearted Christine would do just that, but she happens to be up for a big promotion, and bank manager Mr. Jacks (David Paymer) would like to see her exhibit a little backbone.

So Christine turns the old woman down, and is rewarded for her fortitude with a Gypsy curse. She will be tormented by demons for three days, at the end of which she will be, yes, dragged into Hell, unless she can find some way of breaking the curse or passing it on to someone else. This makes for some rocky moments in her relationship with boyfriend Clay (Justin Long), particularly when she experiences a serious freak-out in the midst of dinner with his stodgy parents. Can the psychic Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) help her ward off the forces of evil..and win that big promotion at the bank?

Raimi relies heavily on (admittedly well-executed) shock effects; he’s not shy about slathering his jump-out-of-the-shadows moments with over-the-top musical stingers, all the better to get the whole theater hopping at once. He gets a lot of mileage out of bodily fluids and gooey innards, too, most notably when a Gypsy wake goes horribly awry. You can’t blame him for going to his bag of tricks so often if his only other choice was relying on Lohman’s acting chops to carry the movie. You’ll wait in vain for any sparks between her and Long, who reprises his usual lightweight “I’m a Mac” persona. No, Drag Me to Hell isn’t a compelling character study, but it’s entertaining enough in its squishy-squirmy way, and the payoff (which had me slapping my forehead wondering why I didn’t see it coming) delivers a little jolt of that old time Raimi magic.

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Morning Deal Report: Al Pacino Goes the Full Kevorkian

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

“Al Pacino is in negotiations to star in You Don't Know Jack, an HBO Films biopic about Dr. Jack Kevorkian that Barry Levinson will direct,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Pacino will play Dr. Death “as he builds his infamous ‘Mercy Machine,’ conducts his first assisted suicide, and starts a media frenzy with his epic legal battles defending a patient's right to die.”

Dustin Hoffman and Paul Giamatti will team up for Barney’s Version, based on the novel by Mordecai Richler. Hoffman “will play a retired cop and father of the story's title character -- who has led a reckless life highlighted by three marriages, two children and status as a ‘person of interest’ in the mysterious disappearance of his friend,” Variety reports.

Anyone thrilled at the prospect of a Tomb Raider reboot? Not so much? “The new movie will be an origin story for Croft, meaning a younger actress would be necessary,” Cinema Blend reports. Says producer Dan Lin, “For me, the Lara Croft games and movies have gone a little too action oriented. I wanted to have action but with character.” And big boobs.

Set Your DVR! New World Order

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Looking back on my all-too-short tenure with the Screengrab, there is absolutely no question which of my posts caused the biggest uproar. It was during this year's SXSW film festival, when I reviewed New World Order, the documentary on conspiracy theorists, 9/11 "truthers" and their fearless leader, Alex Jones. It's not that I was down on the movie so much as I was critical of the red-faced fear-monger Jones and his clueless minions. That really pisses them off. They can't be criticized, you see, because they're in touch with the real truth. To point out any flaws in their reasoning is to admit you are complicit with the ruling elite. These are some of the kinder comments that post received:

"I don't think this guy actually saw the film, because in it Jones talks about how idiots like this guy say it makes the world so fun for them to beleive in the nwo but in all honesty what they say the nwo is trying to do is worse then hitler and the nazis."

"This is the most Bias hit piece review I've ever seen. New World Order was not a hit piece. Unlike your pathetic attempt to review such a film. Your Bias and lack an actual critique simply implies you do not know what your talking about. Nice try but you fail."

"This looks like a hit piece. I guess we know who signs Mr. Scott Von Doviak cheques,the federal reserve,military industrial complex...."

I only wish that last comment were true, especially now that the Screengrab is folding. But anyway...was I wrong? Did I step over the line in describing Jones' face as "a puffy fright-mask of popeyed outrage"? (I don't think so, because his whole snorting, animalistic delivery is part of his presentation, and his squinty-piggy look either makes it more compelling or disturbing, depending on your point-of-view.) Now you can judge for yourself. Tonight, IFC airs New World Order at 6:45 pm EDT (5:45 pm CDT). So set your DVR, give it a look-see, and report back here with your thoughts. Our time together is growing short, so let's make the most of it!

Morning Deal Report: Buffy Slays Again

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:30:00 GMT

More people spent time at the Smithsonian than received Salvation over the long Memorial Day weekend. Ben Stiller’s second Night in the Museum trumped the latest Terminator at the box office, taking in $70 million from Friday to Monday. Salvation, which actually opened Thursday night, took in $53.8 million for a total gross of $67.2 million. Star Trek, Angels and Demons and Dance Flick rounded out the top five.

This can’t possibly be a good idea. “A new incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer could be coming to the big screen,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Buffy creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.” This new version “would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike.” Surely there’s a lawsuit brewing back at Whedon headquarters.

Flight Of the Navigator is also set to take off again. “The 1986 original told the story of a 12-year-old boy who is abducted by an alien spacecraft in 1978 and reappears eight years later, still the same age and with no memory of what happened.”

Summer of '89: "Miracle Mile"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Each week last summer, we flipped the calendar back thirty years to spotlight a movie that was new and exciting back in...the Summer of '78. In the last installment, I made this vow: "Thanks for joining us for the Summer of ’78! If we’re all still alive a year from now, tune in for the Summer of ’89!"

Well, we're still alive, but our venue is gasping its final breaths as we enter this last week in Screengrab history. But I'm a man of my word! I was looking forward to spending this summer re-evaluating the Summer of '89, which I spent driving across country with a friend, seeing America...and seeing a lot of movies. Anytime the weather turned against us, or we just couldn't bear the thought of spending another second cramped inside our tiny Subaru, we'd hit the multiplex in whatever town we happened to be in and spend the day sneaking from theater to theater, killing six to eight hours at a pop. So as it turned out, I saw an awful lot of movies in the summer of '89 (and a lot of awful movies). Obviously, I won't get the chance to fulfill my obligation here, but following this inaugural Screengrab installment of Summer of '89, you can catch new episodes every Monday at my blog, conveniently entitled Scott Von Doviak, at least until I can come up with something snappier.

As it happens, I did not see this week's movie upon its release in 1989, which gives me something in common with almost everyone else in America. I've seen it now, however, so let's kick this sucker off with...

Miracle Mile

Release Date: May 19, 1989

Cast: Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham, Mykelti Williamson, Robert Doqui, Denise Crosby

The Buzz: If a nuclear bomb drops on Los Angeles in the middle of the night, does anyone hear it? If a movie about such an occurence is released with no fanfare, does anybody see it?

Keywords: Nuclear War, Phone, Real Time, End of the World, Person on Fire

The Plot: The opening minutes of Miracle Mile play like a light romantic comedy - When Harry Met Julie. Harry is played by young Anthony Edwards, years before signing on for his endless ER shift, while Julie is played by Mare Winningham in a haircut that suggests she doesn't actually like boys. But it turns out she does like Harry, a trombone-playing goofball who wins her over with his aw-shucks ways. Their romance begins at the La Brea Tar Pits and never leaves the otherwise sterile stretch of L.A. that gives the movie its title. The only other colorful locale to be found is Johnie's Coffee Shop, the Space Age diner familiar from Reservoir Dogs and other films, which is where Julie works as a waitress. Harry plans to meet her when her shift ends, but oversleeps when his alarm clock fails to go off due to a power outage. By the time he makes it to the diner, she's already gone...and things only get worse when he answers a ringing pay phone and learns that the United States has launched a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, with the return fire expected in little over an hour. Now Harry must track down Julie and try to escape the city before the bombs begin to fall.

The Test of Time: Miracle Mile has enjoyed a growing reputation as an overlooked gem ever since it was barely released twenty years ago. Writer/director Steve De Jarnatt (who has never had another opportunity to direct a feature, although he's kept busy in television) doesn't quite pull off a seamless transition between the early, frothy rom-com scenes, the middle section focusing on the diner and its somewhat cartoonish denizens (including Denise Crosby, hoisting a mobile phone the size of a breadbox), and the later, horrific events. In a way, though, that's the point: the way impending extinction completely obliterates any sense of normalcy. De Jarnatt does bring a palpable eerieness to the pre-dawn scenes, as the sleeping city gives way to chaos. And he has the nerve to follow through on his premise, much to the dismay of anyone hoping for love-conquers-all to win out...which is not to say there is no romance to be found as humanity sinks back into the primordial ooze. Although more than a bit dated, with its state-of-the-80s pink neon visuals, Miracle Mile holds up as a worthy entry in the last-night-on-earth genre.

Quotable Quote: "Pal, it's after four in the morning. All of the helicopter pilot bars are closed."

2009 Equivalent: Our end-of-the-world movie is Roland Emmerich's upcoming 2012, which promises to be a whole lot bigger, louder and dumber.

Cannes Winners Announced

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Lars von Trier caused the biggest stir, but it was Michael Haneke who took the top honors as The White Ribbon was awarded the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. There was mild controversy over the choice, given that jury president Isabelle Huppert had starred in an earlier Haneke film, The Piano Teacher. Von Trier's Antichrist did pick up a major award, as Charlotte Gainsbourg took Best Actress honors. The full roster of awards follows the jump.

PALME D'OR

The White Ribbon, dir. Michael Haneke

GRAND PRIX

A Prophet, dir. Jacques Audiard

SPECIAL CAREER PRIZE

Alain Resnais

BEST ACTOR

Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

BEST ACTRESS

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist

BEST DIRECTOR

Brillante Mendoza, Kinatay

BEST SCREENPLAY

Mei Feng, Spring Fever

JURY PRIZE (shared)

Fish Tank, dir. Andrea Arnold, Thirst, dir. Park Chan-Wook

CAMERA D'OR

Samson and Delilah, dir. Warwick Thornton

BEST SHORT FILM

Arena, dir. Joao Salaviza

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 1, 2009 - December 31, 2029

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Pay attention, humans. This is very important. I know the Screengrab gang did a great job this week with their list Fond Farewells: The Best and Worst Death Scenes in Cinema. I wish I’d had time to read about Fox pulling the plug on the Terminator TV series and the review of Terminator Salvation – but there is no time! I have been sent from the future to prevent a terrible calamity – the end of the Screengrab as we know it. Some say that time is a closed loop and that it cannot be altered – that the Screengrab is destined to die no matter what we do. But I have seen one possible future where the Screengrab is not only alive, but thrives! Here are but a few of the thousands of posts you will miss out on if we cannot prevent this catastrophe!

Video of the Day: Scarlett Johansson’s Nude Scene

Oscar Roundup: Footloose Remake Sweeps Major Categories, Glenn Beck Bombs as Academy Awards Host

Technicolor Yawns: The Greatest Vomit Scenes in Movie History (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve)

That Guy! Skeet Ulrich

From Hogwart’s to Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Daniel Radcliffe Named New James Bond

Yesterday’s Hits: Gravity’s Rainbow (2017, McG)

Surviving Olsen Twin Accepts Lifetime Achievement Award

Screengrab Review: “S. Darko”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The “latest features” sidebar over there in the right-hand column of your screen has been a running joke amongst us Screengrab staffers for almost exactly a year now…because it’s been that long since the latest features featured there have been updated. There’s no point in doing it now, of course; I merely point it out to draw attention to the “Donnie Darko Part Deux!?” headline, which manages to convey a mixture of horror and bafflement at the prospect of such an animal’s existence.

That animal is now here in the form of S. Darko, and Richard Kelly would presumably still want you to know that he had absolutely nothing to do with its existence. Instead, it’s the product of screenwriter Nathan Atkins (author of the TV-movie Point of Entry) and director Chris Fisher, the man behind several serial killer movies and a handful of Cold Case episodes. I’ve not seen any of their earlier work, so I won’t hold it against them. I have seen S. Darko, however, so that one is fair game.

The only returning cast member from the original Donnie Darko is Daveigh Chase, who you’ll remember as the littlest member of Sparkle Motion, Samantha Darko. As S. Darko opens (in 1995, though you’d never know it if not for the helpful title cards), Sam is all growed up into a confused 18-year-old. Still haunted by her brother’s bizarre death, Sam is driving cross-country with best friend Corey (Briana Evigan of Step Up 2: The Streets, and yes, daughter of BJ and the Bear star Greg Evigan); Sam is the angsty one, Corey the slutty one. When their car breaks down in a nowhere town and they hole up in a cheap motel, you could be watching Thelma and Louise: The Early Years.

That’s when the weird stuff starts happening. And by “weird stuff,” I mean secondhand effects cribbed from Kelly’s cult favorite: time loops, transparent, tentacle-like blobs, bunny-like apparitions and another end-of-the-world countdown. Characters die and come back to life, and it’s all part of the personal growth experience – figuring out who you are and your place in the world the hard way. The question that never gets answered: Why should we care about these people? Sam is a mopey downer, while Corey is simply one of the most abrasive, unlikable characters in recent memory.

Far more entertaining than the movie itself is the “making of” documentary included on the DVD. It’s hilarious to watch everyone from the screenwriter to the cast to the best boy try to justify their involvement in this pointless endeavor. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll sign on to write, direct or set up lawn chairs for Gomer Darko if there’s a decent paycheck in it, so I’m not moralizing here; it’s just that no one is honest enough to admit that’s their motivation. They all bend over backwards to emphasize that this is a “continuation,” not a sequel, and that it’s very respectful of Kelly’s vision and the rules of the world he set up. No one can adequately explain why this movie was made in the first place. After all, the original Darko was barely released in theaters and only acquired a cult following after its DVD release. Cult audiences don’t tend to respond well to this kind of cash-in attempt, as the makers of Shock Treatment can attest.

In Other Blogs: The Blogger Experience

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Some Came Running proprietor Glenn Kenny recounts his Girlfriend Experience at The Auteurs. Kenny has a role in the film that was pitched to him as “the Harry Knowles of internet escort reviewers.” Kenny was not immediately flattered. “Harry Knowles, if you don’t know, is famous for founding Aint It Cool News, a movie fan boy website of large popularity and no small industry influence. Knowles (and I hope he won't mind me saying this) is also, as Kyle on South Park would put it, a great big fat fuck. I am, hence, slightly put off.”

At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir talks to Girlfriend Experience director Steven Soderbergh about his prolific, unpredictable career. “I'm always trying to be Howard Hawks, sure. I envy the opportunities that the studio directors got in the '30s and '40s. It was assumed that you would make more than one movie a year, and that that movie could be a western or a musical or a comedy or a drama. Very early on, before I made sex, lies, and videotape, I fantasized that I could have a career in which I could move around like that. It's not easy.”

Ali Arikan breaks from the Trek pack at The House Next Door. “Which is all by way of saying there is absolutely no nuance in J.J. Abrams’s film, not even a soupçon of subtlety, no genuine humour. It’s all piff-paff, whack-bang, etc, packed with heaps of post-modernist “irony” or whatever it is they call this bollocks. Nudge nudge, wink wink ahoy. We are all wallowing in a never-ending adolescence these days. So, instead of making us laugh, J.J. Abrams just wants to make us feel clever, and the whole thing becomes a big ego-massage”

Bright Lights After Dark considers the geography of 3 Women. “It's a point that many viewers miss, though it's difficult to blame them: Robert Altman's 3 Women is really "about" California, and quite distinctly so -- it doesn't belong to its contentual municipality in the sense that, say, Nashville does. And it's not about the psycho-sprawl urban California of Los Angeles or the spittle, cardboard and tinsel California of Hollywood or the plugged culture retro-future sophistry California of San Francisco. It's about the other California, by which one means the smattering of middle-of-nowhere cities always on the brink of suburbia these days, and always reminding us of somewhere else. The dusty, mid-western-like cock-and-bull towns that flank the interstate 5 with ranches and groves. The shattered-shell-and-hanging-kayak-wind-chime Mediterranean beach villas that dot the coastal region from Monterey to Santa Barbara. And, of course, the boilingly barren, frenziedly phallic desert settlements that circle the parched Mojave and Joshua Tree territories.”

And finally in List-o-Mania, Topless Robot offers the 10 Most Blatant Terminator Ripoffs, including Cyborg Cop. “A renegade cop (is there any other kind in these movies?) goes to the tropics to find his long lost brother, who has been transformed into a cybernetic killing machine by a mad scientist in this '93 movie. As the scientist, John Rhys-Davies seems to be under the impression he's filming an episode of Gilligan's Island as his performance has to be seen to be believed.”

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Eight)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:30:00 GMT

And now, the worst...

Bjork in DANCER IN THE DARK (2000)

Most of the deaths on this worst list are disappointing, ill-conceived or simply ridiculous, but Dancer In The Dark is another animal entirely. The end of feel-bad auteur Lars Von Trier’s 2000 sadistic (and ultimately pointless) exercise in suffering and hopelessness was so excruciatingly painful and unpleasant to watch that I felt like I'd been punched in the ribcage. Which is not to say it's a bad movie, exactly. Which is not to say it's a good movie, either. I have to give a certain amount of respect to a film (and scene) that produces such a visceral reaction in me -- but, then again, I had a similar reaction to that infamous bootleg videotape of a politician shooting himself in the head at a press conference. Like somebody said once, it's easy to get a reaction out of an audience: just strangle a puppy. But that don't necessarily make it art. (AO)

Tom Hanks in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

Earn this? Blow me. Saving Private Ryan isn't thoroughly terrible, but the schmaltz at the end is hard to take. Tom Hanks is shot by the same guy whose life he spared a few days before? Gimme a break. Why, those evil, ungrateful Germans. I guess they got what was coming to them. All of the swelling strings and tearful codas in the world can't mask how unearned and meaningless this death scene is. I'm fairly sure that Spielberg expects his audience to start laying palm fronds at the feet of the greatest generation who fought the Nazi menace after all this sturm und drang, but I was left wishing it had come some 14 hours earlier, back when I cared about the movie. (HC)

Mel Gibson in BRAVEHEART (1995)

Mel Gibson is really into the torture porn and martyrdom, isn't he? I know this isn't news; even the South Park parody is old and moldy. But at the end of Braveheart, Gibson's weird fetish wasn't old and creepy yet. It was new and creepy! And meant to lead the audience to admire ol' William Wallace for his hearty shout of "FREEEEEEEDOOOOOOMMMMM" despite his (offscreen) pain. And hey, if Mel could take the fake pain of the fake torture and still rally enough shout for freedom, what's a little waterboarding among friends? Perhaps I'm being overly glib; this movie was made well before our nation turned a blind eye to torture. And the message really isn't pro-torture so much as "boy, those English sure enjoyed publicly torturing that Scot guerrilla warrior." But the endless slo-mo, the black-and-white morality throughout, the obnoxious pushy score, all of these were torture enough for me as a viewer before we even approached Mel's craptastic death scene. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to shout freedom and escape the theater. (HC)

William Shatner in STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)

They got Spock’s death right in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, except that he wasn’t really dead. They got Kirk’s death all wrong in Star Trek: Generations, but he still stayed dead – hell, he couldn’t even score a cameo in the new movie. A misconceived bridge between the old school Trek crew – emphasis on “old” by 1994 – and Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and company, the movie was meant to launch a series of Next Generation movies while giving the outgoing administration a dignified sendoff. It didn’t accomplish either task with much success. The Next Gen flicks quickly petered out, and only three of the original series cast signed on for their farewell voyage – two of whom (James Doohan’s Scotty and Walter Koenig’s Chekov) disappear with little fanfare early in the proceedings. In the final reel, Screengrab MVP Shatner shows up to lend Picard a hand stopping Malcolm McDowell from destroying the universe or something, but Kirk’s “heroic” actions are pretty run-of-the-mill by his standards and his final moments woefully anticlimactic. (SVD)

But don’t take our word for it – here’s the man himself:

Shatner Responds: The Death Of Captain Kirk

Al Pacino in THE GODFATHER, PART III (1990)

No matter your faith, your creed, your political persuasion or your favorite Beatle, there’s one thing upon which all right-thinking people can agree: Michael Corleone’s story ended with the final shot of The Godfather, Part II. Nothing came after that. We all know he died at some point, because that’s how it works, but there was no reason to ever see it happen because the story was over. Unfortunately, some wrong-thinking people disagreed and eventually one of those people turned out to be Francis Ford Coppola, who had some bills to pay. He even wanted to title this movie The Death of Michael Corleone, just to make it clear that this is something he thought we should see. And so, at the end of his very terrible movie The Godfather, Part III, Coppola jumps some unknown distance into the future, where we find Al Pacino sitting alone on a bench with a bunch of grey shit in his hair. And then suddenly – and here I can’t put it any better than my friend John Mitchell did back in the day – he slumps over like Ruth Buzzi just whacked him with her handbag. And a little dog licks his face. I realize this is how I’m probably going to go out, too, but nobody made three movies about me. (SVD)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Bruce Willis in THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

The big parlor game after The Sixth Sense hit theaters was asking your friends, “Did you guess the ending?” (As opposed to, say, The Village, where pretty much everyone guessed the dopey twist.) Some people claim they caught wise to Shyamalan’s scheme the second Donnie Wahlberg’s buff, naked psychopath shot Bruce Willis’ mumbly psychiatrist in the gut, but I’m not one of them...and as an online screenwriting teacher (at UCLA Extension...summer courses forming now!), I regularly praise the sleight-of-hand brio of the scene above. We see Willis’ character shot dead right in front of our eyes, then in the next scene it’s two years later and he’s sitting on a park bench, seemingly alive. It’s a neat trick, and for the majority of us who didn’t stop and go, “Hey, wait a minute...” it led to a clever, head-slapping reveal that Shyamalan achieved fair and square without cheating (hello, ridiculous Mission Impossible "Jon Voight" mask) or bending the willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point (so...they set up a fake 19th century society with monsters but without antibiotics? Does anyone ever actually read Shyamalan’s scripts before they go into production?). (AO)

Johnny Depp in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)

Johnny Depp may not have been a star yet, but his exit from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was instantly memorable thanks to its unholy-torrents-of-blood payoff. Reconfiguring the classic boogeyman-under-the-bed scenario into a boogeyman-inside-the-bed nightmare, Depp’s last scene finds him (and his TV) being pulled into a mattress by the gloved hand of Freddy Krueger. Out of the hole created by this supernatural incident comes a horrific eruption of blood made all the more chilling by its reverse-gravitational movement, the red geyser coating the ceiling without besmirching anything else in the room. It’s one of the finest moments in the Craven canon. (NS)

Leonard Nimoy in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)

Yes, I’m well aware that The Wrath of Khan was followed by an entire Star Trek movie dedicated to putting Spock together again…and more than 25 years later, he’s still alive and giving advice to his younger self. So what? Leonard Nimoy knew what he was doing when he didn’t come back to give Spock a final sendoff in Star Trek: Generations; he’d already done it to perfection here. Taking the reigns of the Trek franchise, Nicholas Meyer crafted a genuine emotional epiphany from a pop artifact and set the series on a steady course for decades to come. If I can’t ride a nuclear bomb to my death (see below), at least let me be shot out of a spaceship while Scotty plays the bagpipes. (SVD)

Warren Beatty in MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971) & Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING (1980)

Beatty and Nicholson have been linked in the public mind for pretty much their entire careers. They’re longtime neighbors on Mulholland Drive, they’ve co-starred in The Fortune and Reds, and throughout the '70s and '80s, they shared a similar rep as Hollywood bad boys and incurable ladies’ men. They also tend to die at the end of their movies, so it’s probably not too surprising that, at some point, they would each find themselves frozen in snow as the final credits roll. As our own Hayden Childs put it last week in our countdown of Best Movies Ever, McCabe’s “final stand, his big gun battle, is as unimportant to the town of Presbyterian Church as Icarus plunging into the sea in Pieter Brueghal's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” In The Shining, Nicholson dies as a howling monster, a wounded minotaur loose in the maze, but whereas McCabe may be instantly forgotten, Jack Torrance has always been and will always be the caretaker. (SVD)

Slim Pickens in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Can you think of a better way to go out? Slim Pickens had more than one great death scene, but whooping it up while riding the nuclear bomb that sets off the end of the world as we know it…there’s a man who knows how to make an exit. (SVD)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

A lot of my friends have been going through break-ups and divorces lately, which means they’ve probably also been hearing that old familiar friends/family/Facebook folk wisdom about how the end of a relationship is like a death, which must be properly mourned.

And, given that we're down to our next-to-last Thursday list before getting dumped for some younger, sexier blogs by Nerve, your pals here at the Screengrab, having moved beyond denial, anger and bargaining, figured we oughta tackle grief -- well, grief and “holy shit, did you see that guy’s head explode? How frickin' cool was that?” -- with THE SCREENGRAB’S FAVORITE DEATH SCENES OF ALL TIME, including...

The Guy With The Exploding Head, SCANNERS (1981)

Holy shit! How frickin' cool was that? I remember first seeing the aforementioned Exploding Head Guy during one of the montage sequences of the 1984 theatrical clip show Terror in the Aisles (a horror film comprised entirely of classic moments from other horror films, kind of like the Scary Movie franchise without the dick jokes). Later, I saw David Cronenberg’s Scanners in its entirety, although the only thing I really remember about it now is the scene above, where renegade telepath Darryl Revok (B-Movie Hall of Fame villain extraordinaire Michael Ironside) totally blows that bald dude’s skull apart -- with his mind! -- in one of the most memorable death scenes in cinematic history...second only, I suppose, to John Hurt’s demise in Alien (below) for its shock value imagery. In a way, then, it’s sad to realize that, in the wake of Saving Private Ryan and the recent wave of torture porn cinema, the image of a bloody cranium bursting like a ripe watermelon is now considered tame enough to show as a sight gag on The Daily Show. (AO)

John Hurt in ALIEN (1979)

Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) goes to investigate an abandoned spaceship. He finds a chamber full of eggs. One of the eggs hatches, releasing a creature that latches onto his face, knocking him unconscious. His fellow crew members take him back to their ship, where they watch over him until the creature lets go and he awakens, seemingly okay. Then, during a meal, Kane gets violently ill, and a screeching, phallic monster bursts out of his chest cavity...in the process terrifying a generation, immediately elevating Alien above the majority of its contemporary peers, and providing one of the most horrific birth-rape images in the annals of cinema. (NS)

John Cassavettes in THE FURY (1978)

Some men just make you want to get to the point, big-time. Cassavettes is of course legendary as the man who, some say, created the independent American film movement -- but he earned his rent as an actor in other people's movies, and as an actor, he made his strongest impact in man-you-love-to-hate roles. The one that everyone probably remembers best is Guy, the hungry New York actor who pimped his wife out to Satan, a gesture that his character here -- Childress, a top-secret government operative with a dead arm and deader eyes -- would sniff at as the move of a rank amateur. Childress lays waste to most of the cast of Brian De Palma's visually lush horror thriller, only to meet his match in a telekinetic teenager who must share her director's movie-geek interests and black sense of humor, since what she has planned for him is actually a choice parody of the ending of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point. (PN)

Robert Shaw in JAWS (1975) & Samuel L. Jackson in DEEP BLUE SEA (1999)

Hitchcock used to talk about the difference between suspense and surprise in terms of a bomb under the kitchen table. If it suddenly goes off in the midst of a breakfast conversation, you have a moment of surprise. But if you keep cutting to the bomb ticking away while your characters sip their coffee and chomp their bacon…well, now you have suspense. Hitchcock’s thesis can also be applied to movies in which characters are eaten by sharks. (Hitch didn’t mention farce, although that’s a third option.) In Jaws, we have Quint, the old man of the sea, a man seemingly destined to be eaten by sharks ever since he escaped that fate after the sinking of the USS Indianapolis at the end of World War II. He goes kicking and screaming, sliding down the deck, reaching for a hand that can pull him to safety…suspense! In Deep Blue Sea, we have Samuel L. Jackson giving one of those action movie “rouse the troops” speeches. Just at the moment we’re sure he’s going to lead his team to victory over the shark menace…surprise! (SVD)

JAMES CAGNEY IN WHITE HEAT (1949)

From the first time you get a look at Jimmy Cagney’s unhinged, short-tempered gangster Cody Jarrett, you know he’s not going to end well. Cody is ruthless, bloodthirsty and marginally sane, and like Hamlet, he likes his mother…a lot. When Ma Jarrett (who’s just as crooked and crazy as her boy Cody) finally catches a bullet in the back, he goes completely off the rails and turns from a colorful, hot-headed gangster to one of the most murderous psychotics in the history of crime dramas. Finally betrayed by an undercover cop posing as a trusted member of his gang, Cody’s end comes when he desperately scrambles up the side of a gas storage tank. Fighting it out through a hail of bullets and a cloud of tear gas, he spits death at the cops below, refusing to go out without a fight, but the end seems near when the police snitch catches him with a couple of sniper shots. Even then, he’s got a bloody-minded determination to go out on his own terms: he recklessly fires his pistol into the gas tank, and just before it goes up in a huge, fiery explosion, he screams a defiant echo of the toast he used to raise to his late mother: “Top of the world!” (LP)

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

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

Cannes Roundup: Day Eight

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Today’s Cannes auteur du jour is Michael Haneke, whose latest, The White Ribbon, didn’t cause quite the same stir as fellow provocateur Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Mike Goodridge of Screen says Haneke is “on top form in The White Ribbon, a meticulously constructed, precisely modulated tapestry of malice and intrigue in a rural village in pre-World War I northern Germany.” Eric Kohn of Indiewire calls it a “dour, Bergmanesque black-and-white portrait of enigmas and familial discord,” while David Bourgeois at Movieline dubs it “a serious Palme d’Or contender.”

Five Romanian directors join forces to bring us Tales from the Golden Age, written by Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days). As The Hollywood Reporter explains, “Each segment recreates an urban myth that flourished during the repressive regime of dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, the so-called 'Golden Age' of Romanian history.” Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe: “It’s witty, its contents succinct and entertaining.” Mike Goodridge of Screen calls it “another notch in the country’s film-making renaissance.” IFC has picked up the distribution rights.

So does Cannes still matter? Eugene Hernandez of Indiewire thinks so. “What I’ve always loved about this fest is that people take cinema so seriously here. Movies ignite debates and stir arguments. Where else but in Cannes would moviegoers booing a film by a Danish art film director stir international media attention… Industry insiders, film critics and festival programmers are constantly pondering the merits of both the art and industry, but from my vantage point, in a year where there is an apparent decline in attendance, the festival and market here in Cannes are still delivering on both fronts.”

Morning Deal Report: Rosario Dawson Meets the Zookeeper

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

“Rosario Dawson will star opposite Kevin James in romantic comedy The Zookeeper,” Variety reports. “Live actioner centers on zoo animals trying to teach the keeper their methods of dating and mating to help him win back the woman of his dreams.” Kevin James will keep the fat guy/hot chick genre alive as long as he possibly can.

Stan Lee teams up with Disney to bring his latest hero to the screen. Nick Ratchet is a “lighthearted mystery thriller centers on a Jekyll & Hyde struggle between a meek, ineffectual police officer and his online alter-ego, a tough avatar cop named Nick Ratchet who emerges from inside a video game to usurp the life of his creator,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Will Smith’s production company has enlisted John Lee Hancock (The Alamo) to bring a Hurricane Katrina story to the screen. The film will tell the story of “John Keller, an ex-Marine who orchestrated the rescue of 244 of his New Orleans neighbors after their building, the American Can Co., was flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The five-story structure sat in 11 feet of water after the breach of the levees,” Variety reports.

Cannes Roundup: Day Seven

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds has finally been unveiled, and now it’s time for all of us to put our expectations in check. Mike D’Angelo at the AV Club calls it “a shambling mass of contradictions that’s likely to divide QT partisans like nothing since Jackie Brown. Conceptually, this is easily the strangest film he’s ever made, as well as the least commercially viable.” J. Hoberman of the Village Voice is a bit more enthused: “Perhaps one should call Inglourious Basterds--a sort of World War II spaghetti western, even more drenched in film references than blood--quintessential Tarantino. A little long, a bit too pleased with itself, it's a movie of enthusiastic performances, terrific dialogue, amoral, surprisingly crude, mayhem, and mind-boggling juvenile fantasy.” Eric Kohn of Indiewire is not: “Basterds lacks the crackly excitement of Tarantino’s other efforts, mainly because he can’t seem to tie the whole package together.”

We’ll all get our chance to experience the..er…wonders of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist for ourselves, courtesy of IFC Films. Per Entertainment Weekly, “IFC will release the same controversial cut of the film that recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival. In the movie, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a couple who retreat to a wooded cabin to overcome the grief of losing their only child.” At the other end of the spectrum, IFC has also acquired Ken Loach’s soccer comedy Looking for Eric.

Alan Resnais is not retired. “Declaring himself 'too lazy' to spice up his famously cerebral films with blood and thunder, the 86-year-old director, who brought Hiroshima mon Amour to the Cannes film festival 50 years ago, nonetheless said he always hoped to win audiences,” per Reuters. “‘If I knew that by putting the camera a bit more to the right or a bit more to the left, moving it about or fixing it in place, there would be more people watching it, I would do it straight away,’ he said after a press screening of his film Les herbes folles (Wild Grass) at the Cannes festival. ‘But it's completely unpredictable.’”

Morning Deal Report: Sofia Coppola Goes “Somewhere”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Sofia Coppola’s latest directorial effort Somewhere has secured the participation of a jackass. Chris Pontius of the Jackass crew “will play Sammy, best friend of the character played by Stephen Dorff, a decadent, bad-boy actor living at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood who begins to re-examine his life after a surprise visit from his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning),” per The Hollywood Reporter.

That Dreamworks dream may be deferred. Yesterday we told you the studio had the blessing of the King family to proceed with their MLK biopic. Two of King’s children disagree. “Bernice King and Martin Luther King III have been embroiled in a legal battle with brother Dexter King, who is chairman-CEO of the King Estate, over who controls the personal papers of their late mother, Coretta Scott King,” Variety reports. “Bernice King told the Associated Press on Tuesday: ‘This is a deal that Mr. Spielberg and his people ... have entered into believing that they have the blessing of the King Estate. They don't have the blessings of Bernice and Martin King.’”

And we can all breathe a sigh of relief: the new Footloose has found its Bacon. You’ll recall that Zac Efron dropped out of the project, which had us all worried there for a while, but now Chace Crawford has stepped into his dancing shoes. “With a more mature, edgy version of Footloose than the original, Paramount will likely benefit from the fact that Crawford's Gossip Girl following skews a bit older than Efron's High School Musical audience.”

Unwatchable #34: “House of the Dead”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

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

Eagle-eyed readers will notice I skipped over #35 on our little countdown to the worst of the worst. My rebuttal is this: What difference does it make now? I’m not going to make it to the top (that is, the bottom) of the list by the time the Screengrab signs off forever, and I had no success tracking down that #35 movie, Santa with Muscles. It doesn’t appear to have warranted a DVD release, and my attempts at tracking it down through unofficial channels have proven fruitless.

I can tell you this much about it: It’s a family-friendly comedy starring Hulk Hogan. Since I’ve already gone through the pain of reviewing such an animal for you – 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, if you’ve already forgotten – I’m not terribly saddened that I couldn’t find Santa with Muscles. However, we can at least take a moment to enjoy the trailer together, no?

Aw, nobody told me Clint Howard was in it! What a shame. Still, there’s no time to linger over what might have been. Let’s move on up to #34, which is, by my count, the third Uwe Boll movie to appear in our festering little festival. First we thrilled to the vampire western BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, adapted from the hit videogame! Then we chilled to the “mighty tedious cacaphony of automatic gunfire and bad special effects” Alone in the Dark, adapted from the hit videogame! And now we have the zombie movie House of the Dead…adapted from the hit videogame!

The difference here is that I’ve actually whiled away an hour or three playing House of the Dead in my time, and I can attest that Mr. Boll’s versions lacks the foreboding mood, in-depth characterizations and ingenious twists of the original. It also lacks a house, which is, strangely enough, the setting of the original House of the Dead. There’s a secret rave being held on the Isle de la Muerte, which is more of an island than a house, although it is crawling with zombies. And, hey – there he is! It’s Clint Howard in a yellow rain slicker, looking like a cross between the guy on the Beach Cliff sardines can and a ferret.

To give Mr. Boll his due, I must admit House of the Dead is a groundbreaking work: it’s the first movie based on a videogame that is actually less entertaining than watching someone else play a videogame for two hours. Boll also finds a clever way to cover up the excessive gore that comes from many, many heads exploding, by utilizing frequent cut-aways from the live-action slaughter of zombies to actual videogame footage of same. Wait, did I say “clever”? I believe I meant “boneheaded.” It’s clear that Boll’s earlier Unwatchable appearances were a mere warm-up; House of the Dead is the real deal.

Previously on Unwatchable:
36. Daddy Day Camp
37. Bad Girls from Valley High
38. Chairman of the Board
39. The Invisible Maniac
40. Son of the Mask

Cannes Roundup: Day Six

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

They still love Jerry Lewis in France. Lewis was working the press at Cannes, talking up his latest project, and Manohla Dargis of the New York Times was on hand. “‘Jerry’s here to announce the film he will be starring in next October,’ the French translator said. ‘We’re going to do Mutiny on the Bounty again,’ Mr. Lewis said, as laughter filled the room. ‘I’m playing the Christian part, and we need an Arab so we can beat’ the stuffing ‘out of him.’ Silence fell like a lead curtain. Being an old nightclub performer, he didn’t use the word stuffing. Being an old nightclub guy, he also recovered fast, but he clearly wasn’t going to make himself especially loveable. I wonder if he ever had.”

Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces looks a bit too familiar to some critics. “Pedro Almodovar offers nothing new in his latest feature, Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces), but that’s probably enough for his devout followers,” writes Eric Kohn in Indiewire. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw finds it “a richly enjoyable piece of work, slick and sleek, with a sensuous feel for the cinematic surfaces of things and, as ever, self-reflexively infatuated with the business of cinema itself. Yet I wonder if Almodóvar isn't in danger of retreading old ideas.”

“Von Trier and the festival's standout, Police, Adjective, notwithstanding, the energy has so far come mainly from Asia,” J. Hoberman writes in the Village Voice. “Chinese, Filipino, Iranian, Japanese, and South Korean movies have stoked the most anticipation and inspired the most heat. Both the Competition and Un Certain Regard gave prime early slots to movies that, as taboo-breaking as they are, were shot on the QT and are unshowable in their homelands--China and Iran.”

Morning Deal Report: Dreamworks Has a Dream

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

“DreamWorks has acquired the life rights to Martin Luther King Jr. and is bringing a biopic on the slain civil rights leader to the bigscreen,” Variety reports. Steven Spielberg is among the producers. "We are all honored that the King Estate is giving us the opportunity to tell the story of these defining, historic events," Spielberg said. "It is our hope that the creative power of film and the impact of Dr. King's life can combine to present a story of undeniable power that we can all be proud of." It remains to be seen whether Spielberg will direct.

George Clooney’s Goats have found a home. The Men Who Stare at Goats, based on Jon Ronson’s nonfiction book, is in post-production and distribution rights have been snapped up by Overture, per The Hollywood Reporter. “CAA packaged and sold the satire, in which Ewan MacGregor stars as a reporter who comes across a solider (Clooney) who reveals that the U.S. Army is using paranormal techniques in Iraq. Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges co-star, Peter Straughan wrote the screenplay and Clooney, Heslov and Paul Lister produced.”

But there’s more Clooney news! The Cloon will star in A Very Private Gentleman, an adaptation of the Martin Booth novel to be directed by Anton Corbijn. ‘Clooney will play an assassin who hides out in an idyllic Italian town before carrying out a final assignment. He resists his usual aversion to human interaction, and his friendships and romantic entanglements complicate his mission.”