The Screengrab : spike lee

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

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:30:00 GMT

The Worst:

A.I. (2001)

One of my day jobs is teaching various screenwriting courses, and I always use A.I. as a prime example of how NOT to end a movie. Of course, Steven Spielberg pretty much deserves his own wing in the terrible ending hall of fame: Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Schindler’s List and the tacky, tacked-on “Special Edition” ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which pretty much robbed the original ending of all its original mystery and wonder by not freakin’ knowing when to leave well enough alone. Of course, this unnatural, Brundlefly amalgam of the director’s flashy Hollywood huckster instincts and the Kubrickian darkness of the project’s original father (who died while the project was still mired in development hell) is pretty hapless throughout its running time, but it does manage a nice, poetic moment when David (Haley Joel Osment), a robot programmed to yearn for love from a mother who despises him, winds up trapped beneath the ocean, staring at a statue of the Blue Fairy, wishing endlessly for something he can never have. Hmm, I thought watching the movie for the first time, not a bad little dramatization of the human condition there, Spielberg...for don’t we all wish for things we’re programmed to want but can never achieve? Yet Spielberg, being the kind of guy who DOES get everything he wants, apparently has no use for the bittersweet frustrations of the great unwashed. Nope, Spielberg’s all about happy endings...and, apparently, mommy issues, because the movie doesn’t stop there: instead, it goes on and on and interminably on, getting sillier (and creepier) with each passing moment, as millennia pass and magical future robots allow little David to finally get what he always wanted...alone time in bed with a mother who LOVES him and ONLY him, dammit! C.G.I. + T.M.I. = ick. (AO)

CONTACT (1997)

Seriously, Robert Zemeckis and Carl Sagan? After all the mind-numbing science-vs.-faith arguments between Jody Foster’s astronomer and Matthew McConaughey’s minster, all you deliver is a silly-looking CG beach landscape – snow white sand! glowing blue water! – and the revelation that the much-discussed alien/God is Foster’s dearly departed daddy? It’s a figurative punch in the stomach from a film that’s already spent two hours slapping us in the face with faux-profound jibber-jabber and wannabe-2001 “trippy” sequences. (NS)

SCHOOL DAZE (1988)

So far, so good: by the time he reached the end of his second feature, School Daze, Spike Lee had opened up to new filmmaking techniques as well as expanding his political and emotional canvas to much wider and deeper topics than he’d attempted in She’s Gotta Have It. As the final moments of the two-hour film approached, Lee had introduced elements as far-ranging and controversial as class and race issues in the black community, date rape, divestiture, careerism and gentrification, and revolution vs. assimilation. It would be difficult to tie all those threads together, but Lee had matured so much as a filmmaker, viewers were confident he could pull it off. So what happens? Lawrence Fishburne lumbers all over campus, hollering “WAKE UP!” to audience and actors alike, all of whom seem surprised that he’s gone off script. Viewers wanted to wake up, all right – to a world in which Lee hadn’t pissed away all the goodwill of the rest of the movie on this obnoxious, go-nowhere student film ending. (LP)

JUICE (1992)

Whatever alien virus possessed Spike Lee to give School Daze such a flimsy cop-out of an ending, he apparently passed it on to his cinematographer. Four years later, when the talented but inconsistent Ernest Dickerson made his debut as a feature film director, it was with Juice, his own take on the gangsta epic that was then sweeping Hollywood; for most of its running time, it was a particularly compelling example of the genre, buoyed by solid performances in the lead roles by Omar Epps and Tupac Shakur. Then, in the movie’s climactic moments, bam! Spike Lee Disease strikes again: in a turn of events that is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely, Epps’ character tosses aside his piece and then pursues and disarms Shakur, who obligingly falls off of a building. A random partygoer tells Epps that now, he’s got the “juice”, which explains and/or resolves exactly nothing when it comes to everything that has gone before. All that talent on display, and not a script doctor in sight. (LP)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

It’s not exactly Stanley Kubrick’s fault that the ending of A Clockwork Orange falls short. At the time he did his infamous adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel, the actual end of the book, the 21st chapter, was not available in American versions. (Kubrick lived in England, but he’d first read an American edition of the novel.) So when the script was written, he had no idea that the chapter even existed. It features an older if not wiser Alex growing bored with his utra-violent lifestyle and contemplating going straight, getting a job, and raising his own family – a contemplation which, turning the book’s themes of moral panic on their ears, includes the vital possibility that his children might seem as nightmarish to him as he seems to be to his parents’ generation. Without this insight, Burgess considered the American version of the book to be deeply flawed; and without its subversive self-criticism, the movie Kubrick made of it seems morally and philosophically confused. Still, he’s not entirely blameless; when filming started, he got hold of an English edition with the complete 21st chapter, and decided not to change the script one bit. (LP)

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8th DIMENSION (1984)

Okay, the ending of this neo-pulp cult classic isn’t great. It’s one of those big cast mashups that were ubiquitous in the 1980s, with the whole cast walking purposefully together while music blared on the soundtrack and the camera jumped around showing the audience what it looked like when people walked from one place to another from different angles. But that isn’t what makes it one of the most disappointing endings of all time. It’s the very last thing we see before the movie fades to black: a title card promising that Buckaroo Banzai and His Hong Kong Cavaliers will be back, in Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Twenty-five years later, it’s a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Today, deals are inked to make multi-picture franchises long before they know whether the first movie will be a hit or a dud; even as we speak, a sequel to the nearly universally panned (and not nearly as popular as it was anticipated to be) Transformers movie is gearing up to hit theaters. So why, every time we watch this widely beloved cult hit, must we be reminded of a sequel that’s never going to come? (LP)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

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

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Endings and (especially) middles are hard, but there’s something liberating about the instant rush and hit-the-ground momentum of beginnings, which is why so many great (and even not-so-great) directors are often inspired to make big, bold “HERE I AM!” statements in the first few minutes of films that frequently can’t compete with their own opening sequences. But Spike Lee, after two previous good-but-not-great at-bats with She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, finally knocked one out of the park with Do The Right Thing, which exploded onto movie screens with the sex-and-violence one-two punch of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” and Rosie Perez’s fly-girl attack during the opening credits, then jolted audiences again with an alarm clock and the fast-talking “WAKE UP!” morning rap of Samuel L. Jackson’s dee-jay Mister Señor Love Daddy, who keeps the pace and sets the scene, letting us know in no uncertain terms that it’s HOT and about to get hotter as Lee takes us on a tour of his beloved Bed-Stuy neighborhood, introducing us in quick succession to most of the major players in a world as instantly distinctive as John Ford’s Monument Valley...or even Woody Allen’s Manhattan. (AO)

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Rarely has a film’s initial moments set the forthcoming tone as immediately and evocatively as those of Apocalypse Now with its protracted shot of the Vietnamese jungle. From silence comes the sound of helicopter blades, then the airborne choppers themselves, and then the sparse electric guitar notes of The Doors’ “The End.” When Jim Morrison’s voice croons “This is the end” and bursts of napalm decimate the lush forest, the film fully enters into the realm of the hallucinatory, with Francis Ford Coppola’s pan through the smoke and fire soon integrating the superimposed image of Martin Sheen’s upside-down face, his head on a pillow facing a ceiling fan. Dream and reality coalesce in a woozy, hazy blend of longing, fear and self-inflicted violence (symbolized by a gun lying beside Sheen on the bed) that result, per the Lizard King, in “a wilderness of pain. And all the children are insane.” Table-setters don’t get much more exquisite than this. (NS)

BARBARELLA (1968)

This is more of an excuse for showing Jane Fonda naked than anything else, but the same could be said of the entire movie. An astronaut clad in a rather community theatre-looking metallic space suit floats weightlessly above a yellow shag carpet. Elevator muzak plays in the background and piece by piece, the suit comes off, revealing the astronaut to be a comely blonde, naked beneath the suit. Soon we have Barbarella floating around with her ass in the air to the tones of 1960s muzak. Cute and sexy for sure, but also disturbingly fetus-like. (SCS)

LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

La Dolce Vita has its fair share of famous scenes. The opening in which Jesus dangles from a helicopter flying low over Rome beats Anita Ekberg in the fountain by a mile. Fellini knows that any good opening needs to be odd and enjoyable besides hinting at what's to come. Here we have religion, sexy rich women, poor street boys, modern technology and ruins. And Paparazzo taking photos of it all while Marcello Mastroianni's character quietly eggs him on. (SCS)

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Much is made of the final scene, where the movie's hero/anti-hero, the racist Ethan Edwards, cannot enter the embrace of the household, and the door slowly shuts on him. The opening scene is a mirror of the end, with Ethan's sister-in-law Martha opening the door and walking from the cool shade of the house into the harsh light of Monument Valley, relocated from Utah to Texas for the purposes of the film. Ethan is riding his horse in through the desert, still a ways off although closer than anything else in the huge landscape. The camera's journey from the dark interior to the brilliant and tremendous exterior emphasizes just how small the ranch is. Ethan's visit is his first in many years, and although the film doesn't say a word about it, it is clear that while his sleazy exploits are one reason he has stayed away for so long, his love for Martha is the primary cause. The whole of the plot revolves around that unspoken love. If you look for it, you can see it from the first moment Martha's face becomes visible, all of the concern and ambiguity that she cannot speak. Unspoken truths are at the heart of The Searchers, and in the gulf between what is said and what is meant is the real history of this country. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Hayden Childs

Set Your DVR!: February 17 - 20, 2009

Hayden Childs — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

To keep you busy through the weekend, cable tv has a few movies worth watching. One is most decidedly not a good movie, but it's a stunning failure. The second has an interesting story behind it, at least, but I don't know if it's a good movie. The third is one of the best movies ever made. Choose wisely! Heck, choose them all.

First up is Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2000) on IFC Wednesday, February 18 at 11 pm central/12 am eastern. This may be Lee's angriest and most shocking movie, but all that fury leads him from one misstep to another. Lee has a good reason to be pissed. The history of entertainment in this country (and abroad, yes) is horribly racist and ugly, and quite a bit of that racism still permeates pop culture. However, Lee intends this movie to be a tribute to A Face In The Crowd and Network, two movies that never stoop to showing their story when they can tell it at the top of their lungs. First misstep! Lee centers all of the action on an extremely unlikeable Harvard-educated black TV executive played by Damon Wayans. Wayans shows his character to be a pretender to his social class with an accent that is, well, to call it effeminate doesn't capture its weirdness, but to call it otherworldly doesn't capture its fundamental prissiness. Second misstep! Then Lee throws in just about every type of black stereotype there is, plus a bunch of unthinking white people, and the whole story loses its message because it refuses to include any characters worth a damn. And that's not to mention the godawful climactic speech. One of the things that made Do The Right Thing so great was that the people in it seemed like real people who acted the way they did for real reasons. This movie is filled with marionettes. Definitely worth a viewing, just to see how and why a good idea from a director with talent (and no quality control) can go so very wrong.

Next up is The Human Comedy (1943) on TCM Thursday, February 19 at 5 am central/6 am eastern. I haven't seen this one, but I did read the novel years ago. And here's the thing: author William Saroyan was hired by MGM to write and direct this movie. But MGM was unhappy that it was running long, and Saroyan refused to cut anything. So he got the axe. He rushed to turn his screenplay into a novel and managed to get it published right before the movie was released. So anyway, I remember reading the novel in high school and thinking that it could use more darkness and despair. From what I understand, the book is much darker than the movie, which stars Mickey Rooney and Donna Reed, among others. But the movie was a hit, winning an Oscar for the screenplay and being nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. It seems to have captured a certain mindset of the mid-century American. And the main reason it's here is that I'm interested to see how it is, and it isn't available, to the best of my knowledge, on DVD. Oh, on more little piece of trivia: according to the IMDB, it features Robert Mitchum's first confirmed film appearance in the uncredited role of "3rd Soldier." Go get 'em, Bob!

Finally, on Friday, February 20, TCM is showing The Battle of Algiers (1966) at 9:30 am central/10:30 am eastern. This movie should be required viewing of all citizens of any nation that occupies another. It has the exact opposite effect of Bamboozled: your sympathies constantly shift throughout the movie as everyone in it is a real person with real motives for their actions. And everyone in it is doing horrible things for reasons they think justified. The French torture captured Algerians for information (side note: as Phil Nugent wrote so eloquently yesterday, Jean Martin, who plays Colonel Mathieu, passed away a couple of weeks ago), while pointing out that they, too, were survivors of Nazi prison camps. The Algerians bomb innocent civilians. It's easy to say, but hard to conceptualize: the battle for freedom is never a simple matter. Recommended for all thinking human beings.

DVD Digest for February 10, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

With St. Valentine’s Day less than a week away, you’d think studios would start rolling out some of their romantic classics on DVD. But I’m seeing very little of that this week, unless of course your idea of romance is vastly different than mine…

DVDs of the Week: But then, for me, nothing says romance like a pair of movies from surrealist master Luis Bunuel. This week brings two of his favorites, The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert, courtesy of the folks at Criterion. The Exterminating Angel is the known quantity for me, a wicked satire of bourgeois manners, in which a group of upper-crusters finds itself unable to leave following a dinner party, which brings them no end of trouble. Simon, Bunuel’s telling of the story of an ascetic who stood atop a remote pillar to prove his love for God, is one I’ve yet to see (do I smell a future Reviews By Request?), but its DVD release is no less noteworthy. The films, made during Bunuel’s sojourn in Mexico, have been given the deluxe Criterion treatment, with new transfers, documentaries, new interviews with actress Sylvia Pinal and others, and more.

Other noteworthy this week is Janus’ Essential Art House: Volume 2, which includes The 400 Blows, Black Orpheus, Pygmalion, La Strada, Ikiru, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in single-disc editions, also available separately. In addition, Lionsgate is releasing new editions of the Wallace and Gromit short films, A Close Shave, A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers. Finally- and I can’t in good conscience call this a classic, though it’s not new- Universal’s got the “Extreme Edition” of the final film from the great Raul Julia, Street Fighter (also Blu-Ray). So if you enjoy things that suck, set aside money for that one.

If newer movies are more your speed, this week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: Courtney Hunt’s double Oscar nominee Frozen River (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Genius Products; Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac in Soul Men (Genius Products); Richard Gere and Diane Lane in Nights in Rodanthe (Warner, also Blu-Ray); and a pair of very different showbiz satires, Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened? (Magnolia), and Bruce Campbell directing Bruce Campbell in My Name Is Bruce (Image, also Blu-Ray). Also this week, a quartet of curious films from fascinating filmmakers: Oliver Stone’s W. (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Spike Lee’s WW2 drama Miracle at St. Anna (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness (Buena Vista); and Eric Rohmer’s The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (E1 Entertainment Distribution), allegedly the master’s final film. Oddly enough, the Rohmer looks to be the most romantic movie in this week’s column. Don’t know if your Dirty Dancing-loving special lady would go for it though…

Finally, a pretty action-packed and bloody lineup of Blu-Ray only releases this week: Martin Scorsese’s classic Raging Bull (MGM); David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (Warner); a pair of John Grisham adaptations, A Time to Kill and The Pelican Brief (both Warner); a double feature starring The Rock, Doom (Universal) and The Rundown (Universal); and two of Onion AV Club critic Scott Tobias’ New Cult Canon picks, Donnie Darko (Fox) and The Boondock Saints (Fox). Also, Milos Forman’s Amadeus: The Director’s Cut (Warner) and the table-tennis comedy Ping Pong Playa (Image).

Oh, and Pretty Woman (Disney).

Sundance Roundup: Day Three

Scott Von Doviak — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Spike Lee makes his first trip to Sundance this year with Passing Strange, his filmed record of the Broadway hit. But we don't care about that. Today it's all about the hat. This tragic, tragic hat. Where to start? The white-on-white Yankees logo? The ring of white fur that doesn't appear to have any actual warming value? Come on, Spike, even A-Rod wouldn't be caught dead in that thing. "“I’m not taking a poll,” he told the New York Times. “I’m just trying to stay warm.” Try harder.

The first major deal of the festival has been sealed. "Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest closed a deal on Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, with North American rights going to Senator Distribution, Inc," Indiewire reports. "Buzz began building around the film after Friday night’s world premiere at the Eccles Theater in Park City. The story of 'cops and crooks' (ala Training Day), Finest stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes and Ellen Barkin." Movie City News expresses some surprise at the deal, " given the reportedly hostile reception it received at the film’s premiere, especially to an ending that shocked and angered many." Not to worry, though! The distributor assures us the ending will be cut.

Last week I picked Spread, the Ashton Kutcher gigolo movie, as one of five movies to skip, but if Salon's Andrew O'Hehir is to be believed, I am no Nostradamus. "This guilty pleasure premiered to a packed house on Saturday night and was pretty much a smash...Kutcher turns out to have terrific acting chops well beyond the doofus self-mockery of his TV-host and pitchman personas." Well, I'll say this for Kutcher: I don't think even he would be caught dead in Spike Lee's hat.

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

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

2008 is already getting a rap as a bad year for filmmaking, which is entirely unfair -- it's merely a good year that has to contend with coming right after 2007, one of the greatest years in recent cinematic history. It's also the first year where I spent the entire year as a critic living in a city that seems allergic to art films; when it came time to compile my top tens, which no doubt reflect my current cultural circumstances, I found I had seen fewer of the most highly praised films of the year than in any recent memory. Putting this list together involved a lot of work on my part -- not the normal intellectual work of weighing the artistic merits of each movie and finding something to say about them, but the physical work of actually seeing the damn things, when a good half of them didn't play in my city. This is especially true of the 2008 end-of-year releases. But throught a combination of tactics, including but not limited to Netflix, filesharing, begging publicists for screeners, shuttling back and forth to Austin, and, in the case of my #1 pick, engaging in a quest that would, itself, make a pretty good movie, I managed to put together a list of my ten favorite films of the year. I don't know how you loyal readers will take it -- I know that I'm at odds with a few of my Screengrab colleagues on at least a couple of these -- but here I stand, in a year that ain't as bad as it seemed.

10. MILK (Gus Van Sant, dir.)

Three decades too late, but this is the year of Harvey Milk: the new album by an Athens-based band that bears the assassinated San Francisco supervisor’s name is one of the best of the year, as is Gus Van Sant’s biopic of the country’s first openly gay elected official. Noted by Van Sant as the first movie of his return to mainstream filmmaking, Milk has been criticized for taking a straightforward approach rather than showcasing the director’s more experimental side, but, like Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, it largely succeeds because it lets the flashy stylistic touches take a back seat to what is, after all, one of the most compelling political stories of the American century. Sean Penn is rightly getting props for his terrific performance as Harvey Milk; it’s a career-redeeming showing after nearly a decade of missteps. But no one should ignore the excellent supporting performance, especially those of James Franco as Milk’s partner Scott Smith and Josh Brolin as the tortured killer Dan White. Elegant, appealing, timely and persuasive without being preachy, Milk is one of the best biopics of recent vintage.

9. BALLAST (Lance Hammer, dir.)

Lance Hammer’s debut feature film Ballast is being widely proffered as proof that reports of independent film’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The indie scene was on the rocks this year, to be sure, but Ballast is a mighty convincing argument for its continued vitality. It deals quietly and hypnotically with the emotional paralysis into which a Mississippi family is thrown after one brother commits suicide, and its characters – played almost entirely by an amateur cast using improvised dialogue – are so real as to be astonishing. The performances by a batch of promising unknowns are halting, wandering, and unspectacular, because people rarely react to such an event in a spectacular way. Likewise, criticism of the film’s slow pace seem off the mark to me: the movie’s slow movement and stately grace (visually abetted by some incredible cinematography by Lol Crawley) recall Ozu, who was rarely subject to such carping. Ballast is a thing of dark, slow beauty.

8. THE DARK KNIGHT (Christopher Nolan, dir.)

The opinion of a million IMDB fanboys notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn’t one of the greatest films ever made. Now that it’s available on DVD, its flaws are easy to catch on repeat viewings: too much of David S. Goyer’s heavy scriptwriting hand, a confused and uncentered role for Batman himself, and an ending that continues to make precious little sense. But, by the same token, its strengths are also mightily in evidence, ready for anyone to savor who thinks a big-screen action picture can’t also be a good movie: a number of near-perfect emotional moments, a riveting conjuration of a city caught in the grips of terror, and, of course, Heath Ledger’s absolutely electrifying performance as the Joker, one of the greatest screen villains in history. And, in the same way he used a pulp noir thriller as the framework for one of the most deeply philosophical mainstream movies ever in Memento, Nolan manages to take a superhero punch-‘em-up and turn it into one of the most profoundly political movies of the year.

7. IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T'AIME [I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG] (Phillipe Claudel, dir.)

This French drama is, with Synechdoche, New York, one of two amazing films made this year by first-time directors who are better known for their writing. Phillipe Claudel, a well-respected screenwriter and novelist, has made a movie as small and controlled as Charlie Kaufman’s is ambitious and sprawling: it’s remarkably tight for a first effort, with none of the excess that often betrays a first effort. With not a single frame wasted, he brings us the story of Juliette Fontaine, a woman whose sister takes her into a distrusting – not to say dysfunctional – family after she has spent fifteen years in prison; Kristin Scott Thomas (who seems an entirely different actress, and a far superior one, in French than she is in English) plays her with an emotional and physical reticence that borders on exhaustion, and she’s perfectly complemented by Elsa Zylberstein as her loving, determined sister. It’s the best family drama in years, understated and nearly perfect at conveying its emotional complexities.

6. MAN ON WIRE (James Marsh, dir.)

The most compelling documentary of the year is based on an event so trivial it would be almost entirely forgotten if not for the existence of the movie: Phillipe Petit’s jaw-dropping, pointless, spectacular, and foolhardy tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center during its construction in 1974. Filmed by the director of Wisconsin Death Trip and using similar techniques (including some arbitrary, though skillful reenactments), Man On Wire brings us a movie about the WTC that has nothing to do with the terror attacks that brought it down – and yet which cannot escape comparison, with its images of bits of the towers in chaos (though from construction, not destruction), its central plot of a small group of schemers engaging in intricate planning to conquer them (though their motivation is art, not violence), and its unforgettable image of Petit suspended between the buildings, so eerily reminiscent of the shots of those who fell on September 11th. Petit did not fall; we know he did not, because we see and hear him from the movie’s first shots. The fact that it’s so fascinating to watch though we know he didn’t fall is a testament to its power as a film.

Click for Part Two

Screengrab Salutes: The Top Biopics of All Time! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:30:00 GMT

MALCOLM X (1992)

There was an Oscar ceremony one year where Denzel Washington and Spike Lee were the co-presenters of some category or tribute, and while I may be misremembering the whole thing, it seemed very much like the two of them were pissed, huddled together, leaning over the podium and glaring at the sea of rich white faces before them as they bit through their teleprompter lines in tones of obvious displeasure. While I’m shaky on the particulars, in my mind, I like to imagine the two of them were reacting to the fact that Lee’s masterful, sweeping adaptation of The Autobiography of Malcolm X only received one major Oscar nomination (for Best Actor)...and, adding insult to injury, Washington’s pitch-perfect performance in the title role somehow lost out to Al Pacino’s “hoo-hah” Scent of a Woman nonsense. I’m not always on Lee’s side when he cries racism (as in his recent dust-up with Clint Eastwood), but it’s hard to think of any other reason for such an obvious snub of the kind of period epic the Academy usually rewards (or at least frickin’ nominates). True, Malcolm X was and remains a controversial figure, but as cinema, Lee’s production is a stylistic masterpiece, capturing the shifting tides of his protagonist’s life as he evolves from Zoot-suited hustler to civil rights icon in a film as indelible and essential as Alex Haley’s canonical source material.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD (1996)

Vincent D'Onofrio probably has the best role of his career as Robert E. Howard, the pulp writer and mama's boy (with Ann Wedgeworth as his mama) who created Conan the Barbarian and other musclebound action icons, while spending his whole adult life marooned in the nowheresville of small-town Texas in the 1930s. A mannered Renee Zellweger plays the young budding schoolteacher and writer who makes a tentative stab at befriending him without ever knowing quite what to make of the tortured fellow. This small, affecting film is in some ways a subversive comment on the whole life-of-a-young-American-writer (or "I, John-Boy") genre, because it captures the quiet, rural life that movies so often depict as being an essential part of the back story of healthy, homegrown creative types, and then shows why anyone who had the imagination to be any kind of writer but found themselves physically trapped there would end up wanting to blow their brains out.

MY LEFT FOOT (1989)

Make no mistake: Jim Sheridan's biography of Christy Brown is a rich and scabrous work, full of fury at both the horror of being born into Irish poverty and a body that won't do what you want it to, and the power of Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as a romantic artist with cerebral palsy is in no way compromised or embarrassed by the fact that it won an Academy Award, as if the voters thought this was some Rain Man shit. Sure, for a lot of actors, a role like this would amount to a chance to be applauded and praised for how well they could shake. For Day-Lewis, mastering the physical tremors and folding his body into a pretzel just amounted to laying down the floorboards before he could really go to work.

SERPICO (1973)

When watching Serpico, it's easy to get distracted from the biopic factor. There is the classic man-against-the-machine plot line, the shots of vintage New York...then there is the sense that Al Pacino often seems to be playing Al Pacino, no matter who he is supposed to portray -- though you cannot deny it is interesting to watch him plumb the depths of his own murky psyche. But let's not get lost here: Officer Frank Serpico, was, and is, a real character -- slightly nutty as portrayed by a deliciously young and wounded-looking Pacino, and judging by Serpico's website (hey, go Google it!), quite possibly a few sandwiches short of a picnic in real life. He was of course, a young police officer who went to battle against corruption in the NYPD, for which he paid in health and sanity. Watching Serpico raises some questions: why couldn't Al Pacino be young and beautiful forever? Whatever happened to bringing down the system at all costs? Will people start sticking it to the Man again, now that the economy is in free fall? Will short dark cops start sporting beards and love beads? If American Gangster came out in 2007, does that mean we will have to wait another 34 years for another movie with a similar plot? Who knows...until then, enjoy Al Pacino in a beard.

32 SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD (1993)

Biopics are episodic practically by definition, since it's practically impossible to encompass an entire life without boiling that life down into vignettes. Francois Girard's film about concert pianist Glenn Gould (played by Colm Feore) is probably the most extreme example of this idea. Taking his cue from Bach's thirty-two Goldberg Variations (perhaps Gould's most famous recording), Girard recreates a series of incidents from Gould's life -- from his youth to his concert career, to his later experiments with recording and radio -- with almost nothing in the way of transitional material. In doing so, the film avoids many of the traps of standard-issue biopics, especially the rise-and-fall structure and easy psychoanalysis most filmmakers tend to impose onto the stories of historical figures. There are no subplots about Gould's domestic life, no crisis or obstacle for him to overcome, and scarcely a mention of his relationships or sex life. Girard replaces the convenient formula with a genuine curiosity about who Gould was, what made him tick, and why exactly he retired from public performance at the height of his popularity to devote himself solely to recordings, a moment that feels as offhand here as it allegedly was to Gould himself. What makes the film and its subject all the more fascinating is that Girard doesn't pretend to know the answers, and rather than trying to nail them down, he simply shows us key scenes from Gould's life and encourages us to figure the answers out for ourselves. 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould is the polar opposite of an Oscar-bait biopic, and is that rarest of cinematic creatures -- a completely accessible movie that encourages, and rewards, real thought and reflection. Could this be why it's currently out of print on R1 DVD?

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Paul Clark

Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

WAR!!!!! (Huh! Good God!) What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...

...unless, of course, you’re a Halliburton stockholder...and, well, I guess World War II was helpful in pulling the U.S. out of the Great Depression and ridding Europe of fascism...and, y’know, we’d still be a British colony if not for the Revolutionary War.

And certainly the world of cinema, in particular, would suffer without the violence, spectacle and grand drama of humanity’s battles through the ages, since war has generated some of our greatest works of art (as well as our most cynical, manipulative, xenophobic hunks of exploding propaganda).

In his classic monologue, Swimming to Cambodia (about his participation in Roland Joffé’s 1984 film The Killing Fields), the late, great Spalding Gray suggested a potentially beneficial marriage of the human impulses towards creation and destruction: “WAR THERAPY! Every country should make a major war movie every year. It would put a lot of people to work, help them get their rocks off” (and, of course, reduce the psychic and physical devastation of the real thing).

This week, Spike Lee does his part by releasing Miracle at St. Anna, a World War II drama featuring all the black actors Clint Eastwood didn’t cast in Flags of Our Fathers, and so in tribute to both films (and all the real life soldiers, civilians and politicians who inspired them), we here at the Screengrab present our picks for the Top 25 War Movies of All Time!

25. FORBIDDEN GAMES (1951)

Rene Clement's film opens with a crowd of people trying to march out of Paris as the Germans invade the city at the start of World War II. A couple are strafed, and their five-year-old daughter (Brigitte Fossey) wanders off in shock, holding onto her dead dog. She winds up in the countryside where she's befriended by a ten-year-old boy (Georges Poujouly) with whom she establishes a private cemetery for the dead animals they begin to collect, which they decorate by stealing crosses from a nearby (human) cemetery. One of the strangest and most haunting commentaries on war ever filmed, and the talented Clement never made anything remotely like it again. But then it's not as if anybody else has ever made anything quite like it either.

24. FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959)

Kon Ichikawa's masterpiece is set on an island in the Philippines in the dying days of World War II. Japanese soldiers have begun resorting to cannibalism to stay alive; the hero, Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi), has been turned out of his platoon after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. Stumbling along in search of a field hospital, Tamura refuses to sink to the level of eating human flesh. The one thing he has going for him is that, because of his medical condition, nobody he meets wants to eat him, either. This is one of the rare great movies that might be called honestly nihilistic. It's a vision of pure hopelessness, but it's emotionally moving because of the depth of the hero's desire to believe that human beings might be better than the behavior that he's seeing.

23. SALVADOR (1986)

This wasn't the first movie written and directed by Oliver Stone, but it did represent the official arrival of the Stone we've all come to know, love, and roll out eyes at, the outspoken topical "political" melodramatist. He's never had a better combination, for his talents and temperament, of subject, actor, and lead character than he did in this excitingly overblown, impassioned attack on Central American politics, which came out at the start of the year that ended with the release of his Oscar-winning Platoon. James Woods plays Richard Boyle, an actual reporter whose stories about trying to get close enough to the political violence in El Salvador in the early 1980s (and come out alive) inspired the screenplay. (It's co-credited to Boyle and Stone, and for a while Stone even flirted with the idea of having Boyle play himself.) Even though the movie was seen by almost no one when it was in theaters, a late-year push by the Los Angeles cable station the Z Channel helped get Woods an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it's easy to see why: his hyperactive fast rap gives the movie almost as high a kinetic charge as the bullets and explosions do.

22. COME AND SEE (1985)

It’s been reported that the late Francois Truffaut once said that it was impossible to make a film that was truly anti-war because they tend to make war look like fun. However, the ultimate rebuke to Truffaut’s statement came a year after his death, in the final and greatest film by Soviet filmmaker Elem Klimov. Telling the story of the Nazi invasion of Belarus through the eyes of a young boy, Klimov’s unflinching camera depicts the atrocities vested upon the Soviet people during World War II. As the boy journeys through the countryside following the killing of his family, he is less protagonist than witness, always propelled forward by his terror at what he’s seen only to discover something even more horrifying once he’s arrived at his destination. The film culminates in the extended siege of a small town, where the boy is held at gunpoint while other soldiers herd the townspeople into a church and set the building ablaze. Throughout the film, Klimov’s dominant image is the face of his young leading man, Alexei Kravchenko, frozen in a mask of abject horror -- so committed was Klimov to eliciting this response from the young man that he attempted to hypnotize him, as well as using live rounds in some of the battle scenes, some of which (according to Kravchenko) reportedly came only inches from his head. Yet while Klimov’s methods might have been suspect, the results are undeniable -- a war movie that’s harrowing and despairing, but nowhere even close to entertaining.

21. GLORY (1989)

This Civil War movie tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first all-black regiment of the U.S. military, formed on the novel idea that the people whose freedom was contingent on the war's outcome might actually be of some use in fighting it. (Some objected to the idea on the basis that the abolitionists' cause might be undermined if it turned out that black men couldn't figure out how to operate shoes or march in formation.) The director, Edward Zwick, shows a sure hand in the amazing combat scenes but is shaky on some of the dramatic scenes and lets the composer, James Horner, pour too much syrup into the gears. But the movie's flaws don't count as much as its great subject and the performances of Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Andre Braugher (in his movie debut).

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Sept. 13-19, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Listen up, kids. Getting a college education is all well and good, but there are some things in this life you can’t learn from some stuffy ol’ professor with a pipe and patches on his jacket. Some things you can only learn right here at the Screengrab. For instance, you think they’re gonna tell you about the Top 15 College Movies (Parts One, Two and Three) at Harvard or MIT? Hell, no! There’s too much dangerous information contained therein – dangerous to them, that is.

Here’s our syllabus for the week. Sign up for as many classes as you like:

Political Science: My Kind of Red State: An Election Year Salute to The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, Rose McGowan Takes Leave of Her Senses

History: Spike Lee’s Next “Miracle,” Drunk History

Art and Music Appreciation: Warhol at the Wex, OST: Jailhouse Rock, The Wizard of Gore

Abnormal Psychology: Bad Cops, Shatner Fires Back, Coppola’s Apocalypse Forever

International Affairs: Bangkok Ludicrous, Keira Knightley’s Last Night

Theoretical Physics: Is High Definition Killing the Magic?

After class, feel free to attend these Fantastic Fest screenings: Fanboys, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (or watch Fantastic Fest online).

Class dismissed!

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

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

REAL GENIUS (1985)

If there’s one thing America hates, it’s smart people. Brainy elitists like Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and that pencil-neck geek we used to beat up in gym class make us nervous, inspiring vague feelings of inadequacy that can usually be doused by voting for down-to-earth “real” people like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, who don’t know how to pronounce “nuclear” (and really couldn’t give a shit). But Martha Coolidge’s ensemble comedy about fledgling scientists at a fictionalized CalTech depicts a world where mental, not physical, strength is prized and knowledge (in the form of Val Kilmer’s fast-talking, wisecracking Chris Knight and Michelle Meyrink’s official Screengrab Sexy Nerd Jordan) is hot. The story’s teen prodigy protagonist Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarrett...largely MIA in recent years but reappearing soon in Frost/Nixon) and aging burnout Laslo (Jon Gries) embody the double-edged sword of intellectual aptitude, where intimate knowledge of chemical laser technology is no guarantee of success, happiness or intimacy with actual humans, while the surprisingly charming Kilmer offers a hopeful balance of “real” and “genius,” with the wherewithal to understand that light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation can also be used to blow off steam by pointing the way to the occasional pool party blow-out.

SCHOOL DAZE (1988)

Oh, college...where politics, drinking and date rape are never more than a quad away. This Spike Lee joint takes us to the Mission College campus, a historically black alma mater back in the "divest from South Africa, support ANC" days. It stars Giancarlo Esposito as a fascistoid fraternity leader, Laurence Fishburne as Dap, a righteous, wet-behind-the ears campus radical and Spike Lee as his vertically challenged cousin Half-Pint. Half-Pint is not so much into the politics, being more given to Greek life. The movie follows Dap's quest to get the college to divest and Half-Pint's quest to pledge with the Gamma-Phi-Gammas and get laid. Like any self-respecting college movie, School Daze, takes us through pledge week, a homecoming parade and a dance scene in which half-naked coeds get down to a band. All that plus musical numbers and parachute pants.

KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995)

I don't know about you folks, but my college experience was not a nonstop bacchanal of toga parties and panty raids (although that description accurately applies to the typical day at Screengrab headquarters), so the average college movie doesn't really speak to me. My memories of those days mostly involve bantering about matters great and small over a pitcher of beer with good friends, neurotic fretting about dysfunctional relationships and, towards the end, a sort of heart-freezing paralysis at the prospect of "life" awaiting me. That's probably why I've always loved Noah Baumbach's debut Kicking and Screaming, one of the few "Gen X" movies (along with Linklater's Slacker) that didn't make me want to set fire to the movie theater. (Let us not even speak of Reality Bites.) Baumbach's film covers the final day of college and the aimless months that follow for a group of friends finding it hard to move on from their routine of trivia contests, verbal jousting and picking up undergrads at the local pub. The ensemble includes Chris Eigeman, Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton and the scene-stealing Carlos Jacott, all of whom clearly relish Baumbach's literate, martini-dry dialogue, as well as Eric Stolz in one of his best roles, a sort of intellectual doppelganger of Wooderson from Dazed and Confused ("Why would I ever leave? I am a student and that's what I chose.") Have fun with those slobs at Delta House – I'll be over here thinking up eight movies where monkeys play key roles.

NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (1986)

Innumerable horror movies have taken place on college campuses or featured college students as the protagonists, but more often than not, this is just so the producers can film the movie on the cheap and have an excuse to put nubile twenty-somethings in front of the camera. The highly enjoyable 1986 cult classic Night of the Creeps, on the other hand, not only makes full use of its campus setting (having the alien menace begin its rampage in a menacing corner of the biology lab), but with its campy tone, hilariously quotable dialogue, nerdy outcast protagonists, delightfully lo-fi approach, and innumerable film student in-jokes, it actually plays like a movie that was made by college students. Writer/director Fred Dekker wasn’t exactly that when he made Night of the Creeps, but he wasn’t far from it; he was only 26, and, having been rejected by both UCLA and USC’s film schools, he had something to prove. His later efforts didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but his debut remains one of the most enjoyable horror flicks of the 1980s – a movie that plays more like an admiring postmodern salute to the old B-movie fare of yesteryear than the grim misogynist slasher flicks that dominated the decade. (For those who are, ahem, of a certain age, the movie’s fashions and music will also bring back memories of college that may not be altogether pleasant.) The whole movie is sustained with its terrific sense of humor, much of which is dryly delivered by inimitable character actor Tom Atkins.

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

Sam Raimi’s second installment of the Spider-Man franchise isn’t just one of the best super-hero movies ever made; it’s a good solid college movie as well, that speaks to any busy student with or without radioactive arachnid powers. Think about it: Marvel Comics has always prided itself on mixing real-world angst with its crimefighting action; that’s the factor that made the Spider-Man comic such a success in the first place. And that kind of storytelling is very much on display here: Peter Parker, fresh out of high school and entering his first semester at Empire State (an institution of higher learning that, as a child, I was determined I would one day attend until I found out it wasn’t real), and the turmoil that so thoroughly futzes with his state of mind both in and out of costume all throughout Spider-Man 2 are familiar ones to anyone who’s ever been in college. He’s on a full ride, but his family’s not doing so well; he’s got to work a low-paying, demeaning job to help out, and that cuts into his study time. His girlfriend has eschewed college to pursue a successful career, and he’s not only barely got time to see her, but he’s even a little jealous. He’s drifting away from his only high school friend. His precocious genius isn’t as impressive to his college professors as it was to his high school teachers. And his educational mentor undergoes a horrible accident and rampages all over New York with the robotic limbs fused to his torso. Okay, maybe that last one’s a stretch, but still – you get the idea.

Click Here for Part One & Part Two

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

Spike Lee's Next "Miracle"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

In anticipation of the release next week of Miracle at St. Anna, Spike Lee's first movie since his biggest hit, the atypically good Inside Man, John Colapinto profiles the director in The New Yorker. [Not available online] Colapinto notes that Lee has made eighteen feature films, "three of which (Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X) have earned him a reputation as a filmmaker obsessed with race." That count seems a little soft: for instance, it's hard to think of any reason besides an obsession with race for making Bamboozled, and even the movie that Lee clearly intended as a showcase for his warmer, fuzzier side, Crooklyn, included a subplot about the foul odor emitted by the film's token white man, played by David Patrick Kelly in outrageous honky drag. After scoring a great success with an ingenious genre picture that required him to mostly give it a rest, Lee's new movie, "the first by a major American director to treat the experience of black soldiers" in World War II, gives him a chance to climb back on his hobbyhorse and also to issue the public proclamations that have sometimes seemed to be his real art, which his movies are only intended to promote. As Colapinto writes, the film is meant "as redress not only for [Clint] Eastwood's Iwo Jima pictures but for an all-white Hollywood vision of the Second World War which dates to the 1962 John Wayne movie The Longest Day--and before." It will be remembered that Lee instigated a vicious back-and-forth between himself and Eastwood by complaining about the absence of black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima; after Eastwood invited the younger filmmaker to shut the fuck up, Lee called him "an angry old man" and advised Dirty Harry that "we're not on a plantation either." That stroke was standard operating procedure for Lee, who has a history of shutting down discussions by accusing his attackers of racism, a move that has traditionally left them sputtering defensively. The down side of this tactic that it's left Lee with a public image that he may now regret, if only because it may have overshadowed his reputation as a moviemaker. "People think I'm this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage," he told Colapinto. This misperception makes Lee very angry, and the article describes a man who, because of that, is walking around in a constant state of rage.

One reason he has for being ticked off--even when he has access to Colapinto, a writer who is so much on his side that he even seems to like Summer of Sam and the godforsaken color dance interlude in Lee's debut feature She's Gotta Have It--is that getting funding isn't as easy for him as it used to be. Lee would probably argue that it's never been easy for him, but a lot of filmmakers before Lee wanted to make a biopic about Malcolm X, and Lee was the one who got to bitch in the press about not being given a big enough budget after the epic production was given the green light. (One of the other filmmakers who wanted to make it was Norman Jewison, who was almost ready to go, with Lee's star Denzel Washington in the lead role, when Lee nudged him aside by making a public stink about how wrong it would be for a white director to be entrusted with Malcolm's story.) Miracle at St. Anna wasn't Lee's first choice for a follow-up to Inside Man; it was what he could get funded after he discovered that the box-office cachet he had picked up from that movie wasn't enough to get studios interested in his other dream projects, a James Brown biopic and a movie about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. (St. Anna didn't make the studios salivate, either; Touchtone Pictures signed on to distribute it only after European companies ponied up the money.) It'll be interesting to see whether an historical drama benefits from some of the gravity that Lee has acquired in recent years, seen best not in Inside Man but in his documentaries 4 Little Girls, whose title refers to the victims of a racially motivated church bombing in Birmingham in 1963, and the Katrina epic When the Levees Broke. Stanley Crouch, who wrote a searing attack on Lee back in 1989, believes that his nonfiction-film work has had a strong, salutary effect on Lee: "There was something about the dignity of those people he encountered when he was making 4 Little Girls that had a very deep impact on him, and in some way they seemed to help him grow up. When you got kids yourself and you're talking to the father of someone whose child was blown up by the kind of people who blew those kids up, and you see that this person is not ranting and raving in some kind of theatrical purported rage of the sort that you see in Do the Right Thing." Miracle at St. Anna opens on September 26.

Related stories: Clint Eastwood Would Like Spike Lee to Shut His Face

Morning Deal Report: James Franco Will Howl

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

There aren’t too many roles suited to both David Cross and James Franco, but apparently the late beat poet Allen Ginsberg is one of them. Cross played Ginsberg in I’m Not There last year, and Franco will take over in the biopic Howl. “Telling Pictures documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman will make their narrative writing, producing and directing debut with the 1950s-era tale, focusing on the obscenity trial launched to censor Ginsberg's groundbreaking book-length poem,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Alan Alda, David Strathairn, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels will also star.

The glut of upcoming time travel movies just got a little, er, gluttier. New Line has acquired the Richard Doetsch novel The Thirteenth Hour. “Described as a cross between The Bourne Identity and The Time Traveler's Wife, tome follows a man accused of brutally murdering his wife who is given a chance to save her by going back in time, in one-hour increments. He puts together clues to figure out not only who killed her but why,” Variety reports. Memento just called – it wants its gimmick back.

Spike Lee, who is also attached to a time travel movie, will also find time to squeeze in a sequel to Inside Man. The Hollywood Reporter says “Inside Man 2, as the project is tentatively being called, will pick up on the characters and dynamic but not the story line of the original.” Clint Eastwood was not available for comment.

Related:
Franco Enjoys Interview
Time Traveling with Spike Lee

Screengrab Fall Preview: Leonard Pierce's Picks

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

So,my fellow Screengrabbers have thrown down the gauntlet, and once again, I gotta clean it up. What movies am I really looking forward to this fall? Burn After Reading, The Road and Synedoche, New York, among others. But thanks to the quirky rules we set up just to get on each other's nerves, we're trying not to repeat ourselves, so I've chosen to focus on a few films that have gone unmentioned by my beloved associates.

Of course, there's plenty to look forward to in theaters this fall above what's on my top three list below. The indie film about an Arab-American teenager's crisis of conscience, Towelhead; the wide release of the clever Assassination of a High School President; the American big-screen debut of Wong Kar-Wei's breathtaking Ashes of Time; and the mainstream debut of the sparkling Lily Rabe in the otherwise uninteresting What Just Happened are all enough to put your butt in a padded theater chair if you're a film fan. But beyond that, there's the movies I'm most -- and least -- looking forward to, beneath the cut.

3 UP

Milk: The story of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California history, would be compelling enough, but with the sporadically brilliant Gus Van Sant behind the camera and three terrific actors playing the key roles (Sean Penn as Milk, the always-compelling Victor Garber as Mayor George Moscone, and Josh Brolin as the homophobic ex-cop who becomes their assassin), this is one I'm going to look forward to until its opening night.

Miracle at St. Anna: Will this World War II epic be directed by the good Spike Lee or the bad Spike Lee? A pointless feud with Clint Eastwood during production suggests the latter, but the screenplay (by the book's author), a cast mixing young newcomers with skilled veterans, and the fact that Spike's movies are never less than interesting even when they're not great pull me towards the former and ensure I'll be in line to see this come Christmas.

Lakeview Terrace: Much like Spike Lee, Neil LaBute can deliver precise hits and broad misses. But this story about racial tension in Los Angeles is right in his wheelhouse, with its themes of hidden anger, authority abused and real ugliness burbling under residential bliss. And a menacing Samuel L. Jackson is a good Sammuel L. Jackson, as Grand Theft Auto fans can testify.

3 DOWN

Beverly Hills Chihuahua: It's a tiny little CGI dog! Who hobnobs with the rich and famous! In Hollywood! And it's got...attitide! And sass! If you need me, I'll be over here in the corner, killing myself.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: From the asinine title to the 'gosh-isn't-New-York-uniquely-wonderful' feel to the promise of a soundtrack filled with precious tunes by indistinguishable groups of mildly sad white people to the calculated air of cuteness to the presence of one-note Hollywood darling Michael Cera, there's pretty much nothing about this movie that doesn't make me want to punch somebody.

Punisher: War Zone: Sick of superhero movies? Waiting for a real stinker to come out so that everyone will just shut up about them already? This oughtta do it.

WILD CARD

The Spirit: In the world of comics, Frank Miller -- in recent years, at least -- has developed a reputation as an exquisitely skilled artist, a craftsman nonpariel, but also a man who increasingly takes less and less care with this plots and stories, which grow ever more abstract and nonsensical as his art gets better. Which one will show up behind the camera for The Spirit? I'm afraid it'll be both, but there's no denying the appeal of the project, so I'll be taking a chance.

Related Posts

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Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott von Doviak's Picks

Screengrab Fall Preview: Paul Clark's Picks

Morning Deal Report: David Fincher Gets Goony

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Hancock soared above the competition for the holiday weekend box office dollar. It took in an estimated $66 million from Friday through Sunday, bringing its total since its Tuesday night release to $107.3 million. As those of you who participated in last week’s poll have figured out, that makes Hancock Will Smith’s fifth Fourth of July weekend at number one, following Independence Day, the two Men in Black movies and the immortal Wild, Wild West. Wall-E dropped to the number two slot in its second week of release with $33.4 million, bringing its total to a respectable $128.1 million, while Wanted took a predictable 60% dive, still good for third place.

With Hancock’s success, you can bet the graphic novel adaptations will keep rolling out. David Fincher is looking to bring the Dark Horse title The Goon to the screen as a CG animated feature, it says here in the Hollywood Reporter. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with The Goon? “Created by Eric Powell in 1999, the comic follows the adventures of a muscle-bound brawler who claims to be the primary enforcer for a feared mobster. The stories have a paranormal and comedic edge to them and concern ghosts, zombies, mad scientists and ‘skunk apes.’” You had me at “skunk apes.”

Variety reports that the multi-tasking Spike Lee, already committed to a Michael Jordan documentary, an Inside Man sequel and an adaptation of The Time Traveler, will be filming performances of the Broadway musical Passing Strange. “Plot centers on young black artist from L.A. who flees his middle-class upbringing and heads to Amsterdam and Berlin in an attempt to find himself.” Lee will shoot three performances of the piece, with the current plan being to debut the filmed version on cable.

Related:
Morning Deal Report: Time Traveling with Spike Lee
Fincher's Musical, The Canon of Thor, and Justice on the Rocks

Take Five: We're Playin' Basketball

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Opening in limited release this weekend, the goofily titled Gunnin' for That #1 Spot is a compelling documentary look at the annual Rucker Park basketball tournament, made up of the majority of New York's best streetball players. It may not be the biggest money game in the history of professional hoops, and it hasn't produced many NBA superstars, but its distillation of pure street ball has been hugely influential, and the style of play in both the pro and college ranks has been greatly affected by the smooth moves and trash-talking traditions that evolved in Rucker Park. Gunnin' for that #1 Spot is also attracting a great deal of attention because of who's behind it: Oscilloscope Pictures is a new production house headed by the film's director, Adam Yauch, better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys. Having polished his craft directing videos for his crew, he's now taking his game to the next level, and has made sure that the banging soundtrack matches the smooth hoops action on screen. The movie's release, in seven cities (all of which have NBA franchises), is being timed to coincide with the NBA draft; if all that isn't enough for your hoops-hungry self, try these five examples of big-screen action from the world's most cinematic sport.

HOOSIERS (1986)

Generally acknowledged as the greatest basketball film of all time, Hoosiers -- directed by the forgotten David Anspaugh and written by sports-triumph specialist Angelo Pizzo -- is based on the true story of the Milan Indians, an unlikely small-town outfit who went on to win the 1954 Indiana State Championships against some of the powerhouse teams in that basketball-crazy state. Unabashedly sentimental and unrepentently traditional, Hoosiers is nonetheless is a winner, illustrating that you can avoid criticism for making a straightforward sports film by simply getting it right at every turn. From the terrific period details and the astonishing degree of verisimilitude to the terrifically staged sports action scenes, Hoosiers never makes a wrong turn, and is held together from the first frame to the last by a tremendous performance by Gene Hackman as the gruff coach, Norman Dale.

HOOP DREAMS (1994)

Even if it hadn't turned into one of the most successful documentaries of the modern era, Hoop Dreams -- the story of two struggling African-American teens with visions of making it to the National Basketball Association in their heads -- would have been noteworthy just on its own merits. It's an assured, moving piece of filmmaking, an exemplary specimen of what its director likes to term the "longitudinal documentary", a film which follows its subjects over a long period of time with no fixed idea of what the outcome will be or what story specifically they're eventually going to tell. But beyond that, it's also important for what it accomplished: it helped usher in a golden age of documentary filmmaking; it launched director Steve James' productive career, and it almost single-handedly kick-started a national conversation of the perils of young black men investing all their dreams of success in the idea of playing in the NBA.

REBOUND: THE LEGEND OF EARL "THE GOAT" MANIGAULT (1996)

Originally made for HBO, Rebound: The Legend of Earl "The Goat" Manigault proved so popular that it was almost immediately released to home video. It tells the story of Earl Manigault, an original superstar of the Rucker Park scene (and student of Holcombe Rucker himself) who many say is the greatest street basketball player of all time. He's also one of the great basketball tragedies of all time, as his natural talent, determination, and constant self-improvement never led to a professional career thanks to years of drug addiction. Rebound is hindered by its below-average action sequences (especially unforgivable when placed in the context of the pure poetry of street ball), but it's bouyed to the rim by surprisingly competent di rection from actor Eriq LaSalle, and a handful of powerhouse performances from the cast, including a fiery Don Cheadler in the lead role, terrific supporting turns by James Earl Jones, Forest Whitaker, Glenn Turman and Ronny Cox.

HE GOT GAME (1998)

Spike Lee has always been obsessed with basketball since his directorial debut, and has even managed to noisily insert himself -- to the joy of everyone except fans of his beloved New York Knicks -- in actual NBA games. Curious, then, that his first movie totally devoted to basketball would receive such a cool reception. In fact, He Got Game is one of his finest and most underrated movies, and in some ways, it serves as a dramatic adaptation of the issues and emotions that ran through Hoop Dreams. If real-life NBA star Ray Allen is less than convincing in his first acting role, a smoldering, exceptionally intense Denzel Washington more than makes up for it in his role as the father of a widely feted college basketball star who looks to use his son's imminent fame as a big-time hoops player to secure his own legal and financial security. It's also noteworthy for the stylish action sequences, assured direction, and a minor comeback by Public Enemy, who put together the must-have soundtrack.

QUANTUM HOOPS (2007)

Any successful athlete will tell you that accomplishment is a matter of perspective. For someone at the top of his game, the goal is constant self-improvement, to go from good to great; for someone in the middle of the pack, the goal is to win that elusive championship; and for someone at the very bottom, even one victory can be enough. Such is the case with the hapless Cal Tech basketball team. Despite the school's reputation as producing some of the greatest scientists, computer programmers, and academics of our age, its athletic program is substantially less respectable; when Rick Greenwald filmed this alternately hilarious and moving documentary about the team, they were on a losing streak that had lasted over twenty years without a single win and seen the team lose by an average of 60 points per game as recently as 2004. In the 2006 season, however, Greenwald found a team of earnest but realistic players -- many of whom are likely to win Nobel Prizes in their respective fields someday -- who were thrilled at the prospect not of winning an NCAA title, but of maybe, possibly, walking off the court one time as the winners of a single game. A wonderful inversion of the typical sports-team film.

America the Critical: 15 Movies That Show What's Wrong With U.S. (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:45:00 GMT

SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (1971) & BAADASSSSS! (2003)

In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles, sick of Hollywood’s portrayal of African Americans, risked everything to present his own version of the black experience where, according to his own manifesto for the project, “niggers could walk out standing tall instead of avoiding each other's eyes.” For White America, the most shocking aspect of Van Peebles’ film was the fact that its hero, falsely-accused murder suspect Sweetback (played by the director himself) not only escapes “The Man,” but also takes out a few white cops along the way and, in the final credits, offers the warning: “Watch out - a baad assss nigger is coming to collect some dues." Unlike the “can’t we all just get along” sentiment of the Civil Rights Movement, Van Peebles’ film dared to publicly acknowledge the black community’s righteous indignation after 300 years of mistreatment at the hands of Caucasians (a still-shocking sentiment, as evidenced by the media’s recent saturation bombing of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America!” soundbite), influencing everything from the blaxploitation genre that followed directly on the heels of Sweetback’s box office success to the politicized rap of N.W.A. and Public Enemy and Mookie’s controversial decision to hurl a garbage can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria in Spike Lee’s iconic Do The Right Thing (1989). But (as the director’s son and Sweetback co-star, Mario, dramatized in his own 2003 biopic, BAADASSSSS!), Van Peebles was more a social crusader than a wild-eyed militant, providing opportunity and experience to minorities both in front of and behind the camera...plus, he gave Earth, Wind & Fire their first big break, which all by itself helped to make America (and the world) a slightly better place to be.

HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. (1976)

Barbara Kopple's groundbreaking documentary on a bitterly contested coal miner's strike in Kentucky is widely cited as one of the finest examples of the form. Made in a year when miners' wages were at a then-record low, and mining company profits were at a then-record high, Harlan County U.S.A. not only captures the horrible conditions, dangerous nature (guns are everywhere in the film, a murder takes place, and Kopple is to this day convinced that she was meant to be killed by company blacklegs) and contentious rivalries of the mine work, but also shows the little triumphs, the conviviality, and the never-give-in determination for the people for whom this life is not an entertainment, but a reality. What is most appalling – and most damning of the "dirty capitalist system" bemoaned by coal minders in their century-old union songs – is the fact that now, over 30 years after the movie was completed, things have gotten even worse. The power of the unions, which could barely protect the workers of Harlan County then, would be almost completely shattered in the subsequent decades. The workers of today, now often illegal immigrants or unskilled workers paid barely more than minimum wage, still do some of the most dangerous industrial work imaginable, and there is no one left to protect them. So, watching Harlan County U.S.A. today, one still has to catch one's throat at the terrible injustice being done to the workers of 1976 – and try and comprehend the awful truth that since then, the situation has only continued to decline, and even the simple pride in the face of impossible struggle evidenced by the workers and their wives seems like a relic of an idealized past.

HESTER STREET (1975)

Like a number of entries on this list, Joan Micklin Silver's low-budget, independent hit was made in the 1970s, a time when a great many movies were examining time-honored American values and finding them wanting. Hester Street is a coming-to-America story about Jewish immigrants making new lives for themselves in the Lower East Side of New York in 1896, and what immediately sets it apart from earlier movies of this kind, such as Elia Kazan's America, America, is that it dares to suggest that what some of the newcomers have lost in their passage from the Old World is dearer than what they've gained. The central characters are Yekl, who quickly adopts the name Jake (Stephen Keats) and his wife, Gitl (Carol Kane), and what makes Gitl the heroine is that she, unlike Jake -- who practically welds his derby to his head and takes to making such pronouncement as, "I don't care for nobody, I'm an American fella!" -- recoils from the noise and bustle of the New World and cannot assimilate. Kane's eccentric, almost unearthly qualities, which would eventually make her a tremendous comedienne, are used very tenderly here; the fact that she can't quite fit in with her surroundings is proof of her value, she is rewarded with the attentions of a disgruntled fellow immigrant, Bernstein (Mel Howard), who gives voice to the filmmakers' objections to the crass vulgarity of American materialism, which Jake and his haughty new girlfriend Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh) embody. Gitl and Bernstein find happiness together while remaining too good for the place they've come to.

SERPICO (1973)

At a time when movies like Dirty Harry (and its sequel Magnum Force) were inviting audiences to cheer brutalist cops on the theory that "the system" was too sensitive to the rights of the accused to allow a good, rule-obeying cop to get anything done, this fact-based story (from back in the days when the phrase "inspired by a true story" meant that what you were seeing in the movie bore some actual relation to something that had actually happened in real life) invited the audience to save some of its sympathy for a good cop -- Frank Serpico, a NYPD officer played by Al Pacino -- who just wanted to do his job and stay honest while he did it but was hassled, probably set up to be killed, and ultimately run off the force by all the grafting bullies in the department who were so enthusiastically committed to their lives of corruption that they couldn't see him as anything but a freak, and, worse, a potential snitch. Serpico eventually served as a witness at the Knapp Commission investigating police corruption, though he did so reluctantly; he would have preferred to remain a cop, but it must be a bitch chasing rapists and murderers down dark alleys when you're never sure when the other cops running with you are going to take the opportunity to put a cap in your ass. Although the director, Sidney Lumet, sets a downbeat tone for the ending, Serpico was actually set at what could have been seen as a hopeful moment, with the Watergate hearings mirroring the Knapp Commission and when society seemed to be trying to run the rascals out of the halls of power. Eight years later, when Lumet made Prince of the City, another fact-based story about a corrupt NYPD detective who tries to cleanse his conscious by gathering information on crooked lawyers and judges, the idea that you have to be at least a little bit crooked to function in American society had become so well-accepted that Lumet reported that, well into filming, he and his screenwriter were still arguing about whether their tattletale protagonist deserved to be regarded as some kind of hero or just a dirty rat.

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

This movie, set in Texas in the 1860s and 1970s and starring John Wayne as the unrepentant Confederate veteran Ethan Edwards, is widely regarded as the greatest of all John Ford's Westerns by people who might regard that designation as synonymous with saying that it's the best movie ever made. It's a tribute to the heroic qualities that Wayne embodied, demanding as they do the viewer's respect without flinching from the qualities that went with them -- machismo, racism, and a capacity for sadism, all of them carried to the point, in the phrase used by more than one observer, of borderline psychosis. The Confederate Ethan's attitude towards the enslavement of black people is never made clear, but his searching for the niece who's been kidnapped by Comanches -- a chase fueled by his need to kill her, because by the time he's found her she'll have bedded down with and "become" Comanche herself, which he regards as a fate worse than death -- clearly provides him with the opportunity for a new, one-man race war, a war against the Indians that doesn't end when his enemies lie dead: he shoots out the eyes of a fallen nemesis, because according to the Indian's religion that will prevent him from entering Heaven. Ford, whose relation with Wayne was known to have had its prickly moments, taps into that side of his star who would later tell a Playboy interviewer that the Native Americans deserved to be wiped out for having been so "selfish" as to want to keep their land, and the result is something very strange to see: an apotheosis of a man at his most morally petty. In the end, Ethan returns the girl to civilization and, with all the surviving major characters gathered inside her family's house, is last seen walking away from its entrance. He's an iconic hero without who the American West could never have been tamed...and civilization can't wait until it knows it's seen the last of him.

Click here to read Part One and Part Two

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Feeling a Little McClammy

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:30:00 GMT

You may not have heard of Wayne McClammy, but if you’ve been anywhere near YouTube in the past six months, you’ve probably seen his work. He’s the guy behind the Jimmy Kimmel video “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” and its inevitable follow-up, “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck.” Now he’s got a movie deal, which is making me rethink my plan to shelve my proposed short, “I’m Blowing Ernest Borgnine.” In any case, McClammy will co-write and direct Le Car, which the Hollywood Reporter says “is designed to unspool as a ‘found film’ made in the 1980s about a group of CIA agents who try to foil a plot by an evil car aiming to detonate an H-bomb at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.” Oh please, not that old story again.

Time travel is all the rage in Hollywood. Just the other day we told you about Spike Lee’s The Time Traveler, and now Variety reports that James Mangold (Walk the Line) is on board to direct The Archive, scripted by Proof playwright David Auburn. More time-bending comedy, albeit in the Groundhog Day mode, comes from Universal, which has picked up Repeat After Me. Per the Hollywood Reporter, it “revolves around a couple who realize that they are reliving their disastrous wedding day again and again and start to question getting married in the first place.”

Can Back to the Future IV be far behind? Or ahead? Whatever?

Morning Deal Report: Time Traveling with Spike Lee

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In re-launching the Morning Deal Report, we promised you all the latest news on comic book and videogame adaptations, but here’s one we didn’t see coming: According to the Hollywood Reporter, J.J. Abrams will soon be bringing a New York Times feature to the big screen. The article, entitled “Mystery on Fifth Avenue,” concerns “an Upper East Side luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue that the occupants had redesigned to include hidden compartments, messages, puzzles, poems, codes and games for their four preteen kids.” The $8.5 million residence houses “an elaborately clever ‘scavenger hunt’ built into the apartment that involved dozens of historical figures, a fictional book and a soundtrack.” It’s nice to have more money than you know what to do with, or so I’m told.

Variety reports that Spike Lee will take a break from feuding with Clint Eastwood long enough to direct The Time Traveler, adapted from “a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation's first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.” The book contains “the technical specs for what Mallett envisions as a workable time machine. Developing a time machine became an obsession for Mallett from the age of 10 after his father's death. His goal was to travel back in time to save his father.” Spike Lee’s goal is travel back in time to prevent himself from making She Hate Me.

Finally, those who are still experiencing Sopranos withdrawal a year later can take a break from those elaborate last episode theories with Son of Mourning, a “satirical indie comedy” that will co-star Lorraine “Dr. Melfi” Bracco and Jamie-Lynn “Meadow” Sigler. Per the Hollywood Reporter, “Bracco and Sigler will play the mother and love interest, respectively, of a disaffected ad copywriter (Joseph Cross). When he returns home to deal with his parents' divorce, the locals mistake him for a spiritual savior who will deliver them from the world's climate crisis.”

Trailer Review: Miracle at St. Anna

Paul Clark — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Given his tendency to make inflammatory remarks like those he recently hurled at Clint Eastwood and the Coen brothers, occasionally one almost forgets what a prodigiously talented director Spike Lee is. Considering how diverse his filmography is, it was only a matter of time before he tackled a war movie. For this film, he chose to tell the story of an actual platoon of African-American soldiers serving in Italy in World War II. The war footage on display in the trailer is impressive without feeling like a ripoff of previous classics in the genre. Unfortunately, the trailer disappoints a bit due to its overreliance on the framing device involving a priceless artifact which one of the soldiers took home with him. I’m not sure it was really necessary to go too into detail about this plot point, when the film’s hook offered plenty of dramatic promise on its own. Still, I’m pretty excited to see this, and for Lee to prove once again that he’s still a filmmaker worth taking seriously.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 7-13, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Guest editing this week’s Highlight Reel will be noted physicist Dr. Bruce Banner. Dr. Banner, if you could just…Dr. Banner? Is there something wrong? You look a little angry, and…what’s happening to your pants? Dr. Ban –

HULK BLOG!!!!

Hulk has new movie for puny humans to see! Also see Hulk’s old movie! It a little artsy-fartsy for Hulk, but Hulk appreciates innovative editing scheme!

Hulk think Zooey Deschanel very pretty and sings like bird!

Hulk not opposed to Liv Tyler making out with Kate Hudson!

Hulk remember stupid Jaws 2 movie and stupid Battlefield Earth movie, but Hulk not see Summer Catch with ten foot pole!

Hulk like Top 10 Empowered Girls more than Top 9 Disempowered Girls – they snap like twigs in Hulk’s embrace!

Although a big Guy Maddin fan, Hulk admits to not yet seeing My Winnipeg!

Hulk think Sam Hamm Watchmen script reductive and trite!

Hulk stomp Terence Stamp!

Hulk take Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood by necks and crash heads together like cymbals!

Hulk miss last Friday the 13th movie because puny Banner want to see revival of The Robe instead!

Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

It’s been a good month for filmmaker feud enthusiasts, with both the Clint Eastwood/Spike Lee dust-up and the Werner Herzog/Abel Ferrara war of words heating up simultaneously. The L.A. Times has taken the opportunity to put together their own rundown of “Directors gone wild,” reminding us of a few directorial battles of days gone by.

By an odd coincidence – or maybe kryptonite is somehow involved – two of the feuds revolve around the Man of Steel. You may recall the aborted Tim Burton version of Superman that was to star Nicolas Cage about a decade ago. Kevin Smith had penned a script for Superman Lives! (you can read it here), but Burton wanted no part of it. Later, when Burton remade Planet of the Apes, Smith accused him of ripping off the ending from one of his comic books. (Why the Clerks auteur would want to take credit for such a widely derided twist remains a mystery.) Burton disagreed, telling the New York Post, “Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.” Smith has been known to sign bootleg copies of the Superman script “Fuck Tim Burton,” though he claims this is done tongue-in-cheek.

Then there’s the case of Superman II, directed by Richard Lester – unless it was directed by Richard Donner. Lester’s cut is the one most of us grew up on, but Donner – who was replaced midway through filming the sequel – recently released his own version on DVD. “Though the sequel was more highly regarded than the original Superman,” says the Times, “Lester’s follow-up Superman III was trashed, leading many fans to believe anything good in Superman II was because of Donner.”

The Times feature also includes Uwe Boll’s feuds with Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, proving that feuds taking place entirely within the mind of Uwe Boll are eligible for the list.

Related:
Spike Strikes Back
Werner Herzog vs. Abel Ferrara: Round 2

Spike Strikes Back

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Folks, we’re having a hard time keeping up with this story. When we checked in on Friday afternoon, Clint Eastwood had just fired back at Spike Lee over his complaints that Eastwood’s Iwo Jima pictures were lacking in African-American presence. Coining perhaps his most iconic catchphrase since “Go ahead, make my day,” Eastwood remarked of Lee that “A guy like him should shut his face.” Naturally we figured that Lee, being the mellow, non-confrontational fellow we know and love, would simply let it slide. But that’s not the case.

The Guardian, the newspaper that carried the Eastwood interview in which he made remarks, now brings us Lee’s retort. The Do the Right Thing man hauls out the heavy ammunition right off the bat. "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either. He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films ... And a comment like 'A guy like that should shut his face' - come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there."

“I'm not making this up,” Lee continues. “I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to the second world war. Not everything was John Wayne, baby.” Responding to Eastwood’s defense that none of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima was African-American, Lee says, “For him to insinuate that I'm rewriting history and have one of the four guys with the flag be black ... no one said that. It's just that there's not one black in either film.”

Lee wraps it up by getting topical. “Even though he's trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I'm going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love.” Yes, we can only hope the upcoming McCain/Obama debates will match the level of collegial discourse found in the Eastwood/Lee dialogues.

Related:
Spike Lee Blasts Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers
Spike Lee Goes to War

Clint Eastwood Would Like Spike Lee to Shut His Face

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Publicizing the new box set of Dirty Harry DVDs, Clint Eastwood took the opportunity to respond to Spike Lee’s comments from the Cannes Film Festival. As you’ll recall, Lee took issue with Eastwood’s two-part World War II film, specifically the paucity of black faces in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. “Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total and there was not one Negro actor on the screen," Lee told reporters. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know.”

This isn’t the first time Lee has gotten all up in Eastwood’s grill. “"He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker],” Eastwood tells The Guardian. “Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.”

Eastwood realizes there was a “small detachment” of Negro soldiers on Iwa Jima, but in his words, “they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate.” He sums up the Miracle at St. Anna director succinctly: “A guy like him should shut his face.”

With that out of the way, Eastwood is free to talk Dirty Harry, and to clear up those rumors that he’s taking the character out for one more spin in the upcoming Gran Torino. “Some idiot came up with some theory…Not at my age,” he stresses. “There are certain age limits on police officers. They'd have retired me out at 65.”

Related:
Spike Lee Blasts Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers
Under the Hood of Eastwood's "Gran Torino"

Summerfest '08: "Summer of Sam"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Summerfest '08, as you know, is our feature here at the Screengrab wherein we suggest a way for you to kill two hours while waiting for your grill to heat up. Every movie we profile on Wednesdays from now until Labor Day comes with our personal guarantee: these movies may not be essential hot-weather viewing. They may not even be good. But we can assure you with complete confidence that they will have the word 'summer' in the title. This week, we'll be taking a break from our previous diet of decades-old footage of people wearing skimpy beachwear and turning to a more recent effort by the director whose name is virtually synonymous with good-time party movies: Spike Lee. Responding to the demands of filmgoers, critics, and studio executives who wanted to know when he was going to produce a summer blockbuster, Lee, over the 4th of July weekend in 1999, brought us a bright, cheery feel-good movie about a fat psychotic whose neighbor's demonically possessed dog ordered him to murder couples in cars.

Strap it down and get ready for some hot fun in the summertime with Spike Lee's Summer of Sam!

THE ACTION: Boyhood chums Vinnie (John Leguizamo, in a stunning 1970s-style performance that recalls the glory days when all our favorite actors were zapped out of their craniums on cocaine) and Richie (Adrien Brody, wearing the world's least-convincing liberty spikes) are reunited after a long separation. But things are no longer the same between them; Vinnie has picked up the habit of sodomizing his wife (the much-abused Mira Sorvino) in the kind of discotheques Kurt Anderson once described as "fun that isn't", and Richie has become some kind of crazy bisexual punk rocker or something, of the sort once seen on an episode of Quincy. The suspicious behavior of Richie -- dressing all funny, listening to the Who, dancing with his shirt off, and expressing sympathy for the Boston Red Sox -- immediately triggers in his goombah-heavy neighbors the urge to reenact a pasta dinner theater version of the Salem Witch Trials to determine if he is the infamous Son of Sam murderer.

THE PLAYERS: Spike Lee directed this one, apparently in an attempt to prove that he was physically capable of making a movie about white people, albeit coked-up, rough-tradey, and serial-killerish white people. He even has some laughs with this conceit, appearing in the movie as a TV reporter who gets chastised by black residents of Brooklyn for never paying any attention to them. The screenplay -- co-written by Sopranos fixture Michael Imperioli -- gives some awfully hokey dialogue and characterization to Adrien Brody, who is to punk rockers what Maynard G. Krebs was to beatniks, and the rest of the cast, all of whom are quite accomplished actors, are still saddled with being heavily unlikable. It doesn't say much for the people we're supposed to be empathizing with that at the end of the movie, the person we feel sorriest for is that sick fuck David Berkowitz.

SUMMER FUN: Summer of Sam is heavy on the summer and light on the fun. Vinnie tries to have fun, but blowing coke through his every orifice and forcing his wife into omnisexual threesomes proves to be a lot more taxing than he anticipated. Richie seems to be having fun converting the neighborhood strawberry into a Kmart version of Nancy Spungeon, but his bogus English accent, bizarre hustler scenes, and uncanny ability to evoke a time traveler from 1987 Los Angeles is no fun for the rest of us. Even the witch hunt is really a lot more depressing than it is entertaining, though Lee does get plenty of comic mileage out of a scene where the locals consider the possibility that Reggie Jackson is in fact the Son of Sam, and debate whether or not they should turn him in, given that they're going to need him for the World Series. Once again, Berkowitz seems to have more joie de vivre than anyone else on screen.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: A few of the the local Italian-Americans embrace the way of the Hawaiian shirt, and you get the sneaking suspicion that Detective Lou Petrocelli, portrayed with gusto by Anthony La Paglia, has at least a few of these coconutty numbers in his wardrobe for the Fraternal Order of Police barbeques. But mostly, it's hideously overdone polyester suits, second-hand wifebeaters, and whatever Rip Taylor version of punk fashion that Adrien Brody is rocking that stands out here. The lesson of this highly meaningful movie -- other than that Spike Lee's powerful visual sensibilities as a director can overcome any number of deficiencies at the script level -- is that having some nut running around pounding peoples' skulls open with a .44 can really throw cold water on your summer fun.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: Everyone seems to be having sex in this movie -- hell, the robust lustiness with which an uncredited John Turturro imbues the talking dog that tells David Berkowitz to kill people implies that even he's getting some -- but hardly anyone seems to be enjoying it. It's a highly Catholic movie where having too much of a good time gets you stuck with an angry spouse who wants to divorce you, an angry mob who wants to lynch you, or an angry lunatic who wants to shoot you in the face. Although there's lots of pretty women in the movie (including Sorvino, Bebe Neuwirth, and Jennifer Esposito), all of them end up crying, and none of them wear a bikini. All that said, it's a damn good movie despite its reputation as a lesser Spike Lee effort, and it has one of the highest occurences of the word "fuck" of any movie ever made. Which, if you've had some of the same kind of summers that we've had, is perfectly appropriate.

Turned Stick-Up Kid, But Look What You Done Did

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:30:00 GMT

The fifth and final season of The Wire, considered in some quarters to be the best show in television history, has wrapped up, and with an August release set for the DVD box set, it's ready to take what we're guessing will be a lofty place in the annals of TV drama. One of the great strengths of the show was its dynamite ensemble cast -- there wasn't a bad actor on the show, and it was a character actor's dream. Very few of the urban drama's regulars were established name actors; Frankie Faison, who played the politically adept police commissioner Ervin Burrell, was probably the best-known face to moviegoers from his appearances in the Hannibal Lecter films. And although the series gave a lot of otherwise unknown talents a chance to shine, a lot of fans wondered if their success on The Wire would translate to roles elsewhere.

As New York magazine's Vulture blog reports, after a few rough patches, at least a few Wire alums are going on to prominent roles outside the confines of HBO: Amy Ryan, after an Oscar-nominated role in Gone Baby Gone, is now a series regular on The Office; Lance Reddick is appearing in Lost and on the big screen in Fringe; Jamie Hector will have a recurring role on Heroes next season; Gbenga Akinnagbe appears in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3; Idris Elba (who was so compelling as the drug kingpin Stringer Bell) will be in both Rocknrolla and The Unborn; Tristan Wilds, who was fantastic as corner kid turned stick-up boy Michael Lee, will be in (of all things) the upcoming Beverly Hills 90210 TV series; series star Dominic West will be in the sequel to The Punisher; and Michael K. Williams, arguably The Wire's most charismatic actor as the thuglife Robin Hood named Omar, will be appearing in high-profile roles in Spike Lee's WWII epic Miracle at St. Anna and the eagerly anticipated big-screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Which is all well and good, but if Robert F. Chew -- one of the show's greatest actors as the conniving drug dealer "Proposition Joe" Stewart -- doesn't get some big-screen time soon, we're gonna be most upset.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 17-23, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Here we are on the verge of a three-day weekend – the perfect opportunity to catch up with the week in Screengrabbin’. Take that laptop out to the beach and dig in to one of our finest weeks ever in film-related snarkery:

All the Cannes news you can eat, including review roundups for Steven Soderbergh’s Che and Clint Eastwood's Changeling.

Speaking of Eastwood, Spike Lee has some words for him.

Something you may not know about Prince Caspian: It’s Some Goofy-Ass Shit.

Those guys in the raincoats in the back row of the theater? That’s us taking in The Sweet 16 Jailbait Movies.

Flashbacks to summers past: Yesterday’s Hits looks at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Summerfest ’08 launches with A Summer Place, and Summer of ’78 kicks off with Thank God It’s Friday.

Our Unwatchable journey through the IMDb Bottom 100 continues with the Aussie werewolves of Howling III, the strangely middle-aged juvenile delinquent of I Accuse My Parents, and the horny bikini babes of Horrors of Spider Island.

Grumpy Old Actresses square off in a 90-year feud.

Which giant ape movie is truly the King of Kong?

That sound you hear isn’t fingernails on a chalkboard – it’s OST: There Will Be Blood.

What’s Three More Terminator Movies between friends?

Whatever happened to Better Off Dead auteur Savage Steve Holland?

And finally, forget Uwe Boll – the worst filmmaker of our time is Albert Pyun.

Spike Lee Blasts Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Talking up his World War II epic Miracle at St. Anna, due in October from Walt Disney (!), Spike Lee took the opportunity to get in some shots at a couple of perennial Cannes darlings.

It wasn’t quite Kanye West declaring that George Bush doesn’t like black people, but Lee did have some thoughts to share about Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed pair of WWII pics, Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. "Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total and there was not one Negro actor on the screen," Lee told reporters. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

At least that observation has some relevance to Lee’s current project, but he seemed to go out of his way to swipe at the Coen brothers as well. "I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't. Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that."

All of this comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which also notes that Lee is about to start work on a documentary about basketball legend Michael Jordan. Lee knows Jordan from the commercials they did together for sneakers made by Asian sweatshop labor, a little factoid Eastwood or the Coens may want to bring up next time the Do the Right Thing man starts gassing on about his respect for human life.

Spike Lee Goes to War

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

For a long time, the Spike Lee joint was a genre unto itself – an occasionally arresting but highly unfocused mish-mosh; with one year’s Girl 6 blurring into another year’s She Hate Me, it was almost as if Lee was making one, long strident movie with the overriding purpose of drawing attention to its essential Spikeness. That changed somewhat with the 2006 release of Inside Man, a more-or-less straightforward take on the heist genre. Now Lee is putting the finishing touches on another film in a venerable Hollywood tradition: a war movie called Miracle at St. Anna.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Lee describes the movie as “a story about faith and what exactly the miracle is, that's left up to individual people - there are several miracles in this film, and I hope people can see them. All I will say is that, having lived on this earth for 57 years, I know that miracles happen.” One of those miracles must be Lee reaching the age of 57 despite being born in 1957, but I digress.

St. Anna is based on a novel by James McBride, which recounts “the deeds of four ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ from the US Army's Negro 92nd Division, who are trapped behind enemy lines in Tuscany, the book is like a Roman mosaic, piecing together different narratives to reveal the complex moral landscape of war.” Lee is shooting the picture at the legendary Cinecittà Studios in Rome and in the actual battle sites in the Tuscan mountains – the first time the director has filmed outside the United States.

“For me, this film is a homage to Rossellini, De Sica, and those cats,” says Lee, revealing an unexpected passion for Italian neorealism. Lee hopes to premiere the film at the Venice Film Festival later this year.

Cannes 2008: Meet the Jury!

Paul Clark — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, The Screengrab was the 152nd blog on the web to post the Competition slate for next month's Cannes Film Festival. But before you start predicting the winners sight unseen, we suggest you get to know the members of the Competition jury. That way you'll know whose names to curse when your favorite filmmaker gets smoked by some little-known furriner whose name you can't pronounce.

This year's Cannes Competition Jury:

Sean Penn (Jury President) is a filmmaker of some note, directing four films since his 1990 debut, The Indian Runner. His most recent film is the memorably Oscar-snubbed Into the Wild. When not behind the camera, Penn is also known for his political and charitable work, which has taken him to Iran and to the post-Katrina New Orleans. Penn has also been known to act on occasion.

Sergio Castellitto has appeared in several films in Competition, including 2001's Va Savoir and 2002's The Religion Hour (My Mother's Smile). Once referred to by Screengrab favorite Mike D'Angelo as "maybe the most underrated thesp alive," he also starred in the popular Mostly Martha, better known as No Reservations, Except Good. Castellitto has also directed two features, including the 2004 film Don't Move, in which he exercised his director's clout in order to give himself several love scenes with Penelope Cruz.

Natalie Hershlag, alternately known as Natalie Portman, made her big-screen debut at age 13 in Luc Besson's The Professional, sometimes referred to as Léon by various talkbackers on Ain't It Cool News. Since that time, she has become one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation, particularly among horny fanboys who despair that she will never get completely naked onscreen. Hershlag is set to make her directorial debut in this year's omnibus film New York, I Love You, where her short film will appear alongside new works by such acclaimed filmmakers as Brett Ratner and Scarlett Johansson. She also wants you to know that the Shins will totally change your life.

Alfonso Cuaron first gained international critical attention with his 1995 film A Little Princess, and subsequent films like Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men have proven him a formidable talent (he also allegedly made a low-budget adaptation of a little-known English fantasy novel, but no one knows what became of this). In 2006, his high-profile friendship with fellow Mexican filmmakers Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu let to the trio briefly becoming known as "The Three Amigos" for several months before they were sued by Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has such a long name that I run the risk of hitting my character limit simply by typing it. Luckily for me, he prefers to simply be called "Joe." Joe has garnered widespread critical acclaim for his whimsical, magical-realist films, which include Mysterious Object at Noon, Blissfully Yours, and Syndromes and a Century. His 2004 film Tropical Malady won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and Roger Ebert called the film "a meditation on portentous but incoherent themes." By which we're guessing he meant "awesome."

Alexandra Maria Lara, a ravishing Romanian who moved to Germany at age 4, made her movie debut at 16. However, the role that brought her international acclaim came in 2004's Downfall, in which she portrayed Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge. Since then, she costarred in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth and in last year's Ian Curtis biopic Control, where she met current boyfriend Sam Riley (isn't that cute?). Lara will next appear in Stephen Daldry's The Reader, as well as taking a supporting role in Spike Lee's WWII drama Miracle at St. Anna, a role you won't find out about by looking her up on IMDb.

Rachid Bouchareb is a French director-producer who last appeared at Cannes with his 2006 drama Days of Glory. In addition to his own films, he has also produced the work of numerous other filmmakers, including all four features to date by Bruno Dumont. Sorry, I have nothing humorous to say about this guy.

So there you have it. Seven jury members, down from nine last year. How will they vote? Will Penn insist on a political bent, or at least something appeals to his artier side? Will Cuaron stump for his fellow Latin Americans? Which Bouchareb will show up- the one who directed the rousing WW2 or the guy who produces Bruno Dumont movies? Will Joe gravitate to fellow talking-primate lover Charlie Kaufman? Will the paparazzi devote most of their attention to Portman and Lara (yes, they will)? Let the blind prognosticating commence in 5, 4, 3...