The Screengrab : the beatles

In Other Blogs, Starring Roger Ebert as The Phantom

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Forget the four decades of movie reviewing, Pulitzer or no. Roger Ebert was clearly put on this earth to blog. His latest entry is a freewheeling reminiscence of his longtime sparring with Gene Siskel as well as a good-humored analysis of his physical appearance, then and now. “What does it feel like to resemble the Phantom of the Opera? You learn to live with it. I've never concerned myself overmuch about how I looked. I got a lot of practice at indifference during my years as the Michelin Man. Yes, years before I acquired my present problems, I was not merely fat, but was universally known as ‘the fat one,’ to distinguish me from ‘the thin one,’ who was Gene Siskel, who was not all that thin, but try telling that to Gene: ‘Spoken like the gifted Haystacks Calhoun tribute artist that you are.’”

Andrew O’Hehir goes Beyond the Multiplex to contemplate the cult of WALL-E. “Like all contemporary parents, I love Pixar, because its movies ingratiate themselves to adults without condescending to children…On the other hand: WTF? WALL-E is a cartoon, dammit. It's a pretty good cartoon, one that blends together a lot of half-baked themes from more serious works of film and literature into a clever pastiche flavored for today's kidult tastes. I liked it fine, and the overreaction in some quarters is not Pixar's or Stanton's fault. But don't insult our intelligence by claiming that it's the best movie of the year or the best animated film ever made or a masterpiece or a mantelpiece. It might be the third-best Pixar movie of the decade. Which, hey, is not nothing.”

Over at The House Next Door, Dan Callahan considers the early work of Carole Lombard. “Even worse than White Woman is Bolero (1934), where Lombard has to try to act and even dance with the wooden George Raft. It’s a dull movie, but it does boast a defining moment for Lombard: she strips down to her slip again, and Raft dares her to dance something for him. Lombard’s face lights up, as if she’s thinking, ‘What the hell,’ (or ‘What the fuck,’ since she was addicted to longshoreman language). She stomps across the screen in her slip and stockings, while Raft and everyone in the audience thinks, ‘This woman must be one of the best lays in the world.’”

At The Auteurs, Glen Kenny wonders whatever happened to James Bond’s sense of humor. “In Dr. No, Connery's Bond was suave and very chilly, his wit exceptionally mordant—as exemplified in the famous kiss-off ‘You've had your six.’ Bond's a little looser in From Russia With Love, and by Goldfinger he's letting the bon-mots fly, from his explanation as to why that brandy is disappointing to his very square observation about how to best listen to the Beatles. But that's not to say that Bond isn't pissed off at the murder of Jill Masterson—he is, and plenty. Here is where the genius of Connery's characterization registers most strongly. Andrew Sarris pegged Connery as a superb physical actor after his purposeful shipboard stride to rescue a near-drowned Tippie Hedren in Hitchcock's Marnie. If, facially and verbally, Connery's Bond gives the impression of a smart cynic, his body language—his bearing, the way he walks, and more—tells a different, more purposeful, story. It's safe to say that no subsequent Bond man, no matter how gifted an actor, ever tried to play that kind of double game.”

And in List-o-Mania this week, Spoutblog offers the 10 Most Accessible Foreign Films of the Last Ten Years, including Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India. “The running time of 3 hrs. 43 min. probably seems like a deterrent, but this Bollywood film really does feel a lot shorter than it is. Really. And anyway its compelling story of an underdog cricket team is familiar enough that you don’t have to pay too much attention if you don’t have the time — though it will be difficult to let your attention stray except for during some of the less-adequately translated musical numbers that aren’t so significant or relatable to most Western viewers. Just think of this film as your typical Hollywood sports movie, except instead of the final game being quickly highlighted in the last 30 minutes, it’s seemingly depicted in its entirety for more than an hour.”

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Features (Part Four)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (2001)

This unusual Japanese film is arguably the most original and affecting movie yet from the Japanese director Satoshi Kon, whose other credits include Tokyo Godfathers and the wigged-out TV series Paranoia Agent. The title character here is Chiyoko Fujiwara, an ancient and reclusive film actress who consents to a rare filmed interview with her biggest fan, Genya Tachibana, a documentarian who once saved her life on a film set when he was a boy. As the actress, guided by the heavy-set, worshipful Tachibana, goes over the events of her life and career, they become inextricably mixed with scenes from her films and with Tachibana's own memories. (He sees himself as her devoted protector.) The film has some similarities to Kon's first feature, Perfect Blue, but without the murder-thriller plotting, and the violence and sexual nastiness that have stuck Kon with a reputation as Mister Kink. What's left is a dream about the movies and how they shape the memories and lives of those who make them, and those who watch them.

TOY STORY 2 (1999)

The third film from Pixar, which credits Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich as co-directors alongside the busy John Lasseter, is one of those rare sequels that actually deepens and enriches the original. Partly this is just because the technology had already made great strides in the four years since the first Toy Story changed the face of animation. The visages of the human characters were no longer a freakishly hideous roadblock to enjoying what the computer animators were always able to accomplish when creating characters (toys, insects) with the appearance of hard plastic surfaces. By the time of Toy Story 2, their ability to play with the human form had improved to the point that they were able to cariacture it: the movie's villain, the fat, infantile collector (voice, inevitably, by Wayne Knight) who thinks that toys are for "appreciating" and profiteering (as opposed to being played with) is the nastiest, funniest potshot ever taken at geekdom from within the confines of a movie that might have been expected to kiss geekdom's ass a little. More importantly, the collector character paves the way for the humanoid triumphs of The Incredibles and the second half of Wall-E.

NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (1984)

Technically, this epic sci-fi adventure predates the creation of Studio Ghibli, where its writer-director, Hayao Miyazaki, would go on to hatch such triumphs as Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky. But it definitely laid the groundwork for what was to come. It was the first feature on which Miyazaki worked as both director and writer (adapting the screenplay from the manga series of the same name that he was working on, which was begun a couple of years before the movie went into production but wasn't completed until after its release) and it served as his introduction to several major collaborators. It also established key elements of his work, ranging from its plucky young heroine to its creator's aircraft fetish, that would become very familiar to Miyazaki fans in the coming years. And in its environmental message and apocalyptic imagery, it's an especially close cousin to one film where he really kicked out the jams, Princess Mononoke. An overseas sensation, Nausicaa was first seen in America in a badly dubbed, incoherently re-edited, much shorter version (called Warriors of the Wind) that was put out by some people who we should pity for the torments they will eventually endure in Hell. In 2005, the real movie was finally made readily available on our shores thanks to DVD.

YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968)

The animated feature as sixties pop banquet, and if it's one of the many contenders for the title of First Full-Length Music Video, that wouldn't be an insult if more music videos had employed a spirit half as playful to go with their eye-popping visuals. With its happy mix of styles from all over and a script that delights in punning wordplay, it has the feel of a commercial job that turned into a labor of love for the many different talents involved, ranging from the director, George Dunning, a Canadian who never worked on anything as high-profile again, to Love Story author Erich Segal, one of several fellows credited with the screenplay. Amusingly, the list of people who worked closely on it does not include the Beatles, who were required to cough up a few new songs for the soundtrack but otherwise were too busy working on that deathless masterpiece Magical Mystery Tour to do anything but drop by the studio long enough to film the live-action epilogue, without question the worst and most easily dispensable thing in the movie. Most of the songs were already well-established hits from earlier albums, and their speaking voices were provided by various actors. At one point in the middle of the production, the cops showed up and hauled off the free-spirited dude who was providing the voice of Ringo; it turned out that he was a deserter from the British Army. After his departure, the rest of Ringo's lines were done by Paul Angelis, who was already playing both George Harrison and the head of the Blue Meanies. Although they appeared to love it as much as everyone else after they saw it, the Beatles' attitude about the movie while it was being made can perhaps be gauged by the title of George Harrison's contribution to the soundtrack, "Only a Northern Song"--a reference to the publishing company that had been formed to handle Lennon/McCartney compositions. (At the time, the title and such lyrics as "It doesn't really matter what chords I play/ What words I say or time of day it is/ As it's only a Northern song" might have been taken as a hint that Harrison was getting fed up with having his own songwriting career treated by his bandmates as an afterthought.)

Click here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, & Part Five.

Summer of '78: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Release Date: July 24, 1978

Cast: Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees, George Burns, Donald Pleasance, Sandy Farina, Steve Martin, Aerosmith

The Buzz: The classic Beatles album comes to life on the big screen...without the Beatles. Or as its producers claimed before its release, “This generation’s Gone with the Wind.”

Keywords: Beatles, Based on Album, Cornet, Glass Coffin, Hot Air Balloon, Drugged Drink

The Plot: There’s a plot? Well, let’s see…crinkly narrator George Burns tells us of a magical town called Heartland, full of love and joy and the wonderful music of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Sgt. Pepper left his musical instruments to the town of Heartland – instruments with the power to make dreams come true, Burns (as Heartland mayor Mr. Kite) tells us. Eventually Pepper’s grandson Billy Shears (Peter Frampton) and the Henderson brothers (The Bee Gees) form a new version of the band, which becomes quite popular. Hollywood music mogul B.D. Hoffler (Donald Pleasance) signs the band to his label, and they must leave Heartland – and Billy’s girlfriend Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina) behind. While the boys are away being corrupted by the music biz, Heartland is taken over by Mean Mr. Mustard and his singing robots. They hate joy! They hate love! They love money! They steal the magical instruments and Heartland descends into decrepitude. Now superstars, Billy and the Hendersons are alerted to the disappearance of the instruments by Strawberry and set out to recover them. They also perform a benefit concert for the town, with guest appearances by Earth, Wind and Fire and Future Villain Band (played by Aerosmith). This is when things get really confusing, but somehow Strawberry is killed, Billy is depressed and tries to kill himself, but a weathervane turns into Billy Preston, who shoots lightning out of his hands to save Billy and also turn some other people into nuns. Or something like that.

The Test of Time: This movie fails just about any test you’d like to give it, but none more so than the test of time. I can see why it seemed like a good idea in ’78: the first wave of Beatle nostalgia was sweeping the land, with the Beatlemania revue lighting up Broadway (“Not the Beatles, but an incredibly simulation!”) Producer Robert Stigwood had successfully brought the rock musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy to the screen. Put two and two together and you get…an incoherent exercise in Ken Russell-lite psychedelia with a nearly unlistenable soundtrack, and one of the most notorious bombs of the ’70s. What’s really amazing to me is that I’d never seen it before now. Even at the heights of my own Beatle mania in the ’80s, I never sought it out; its reputation was always that terrible. And, I must say, well deserved. Produced more than a decade after the album that inspired it, the movie is actually much more dated than its source (which, lets be honest, is pretty dated itself). I don’t think anyone has ever accused Peter Frampton or The Bee Gees of being timeless artists, but even so, their disco fried versions of the Beatles classics are enough to make me doubt I ever liked the songs. They might as well be singing the lyrics phonetically for all the meaning and emotion they’re able to wring out of them, and the songs are all used in such numbingly obvious ways. (“Say, the sun is coming up in this scene. What would be a good number to sing here?”) And then there’s the “Golden Throats” parade of guest performers, including George Burns and his timeless rendition of “Fixing a Hole.” Seriously, did any of you buy this soundtrack album and listen to it on purpose? I mean, more than once? Steve Martin’s goony take on “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is often cited as one of the few highlights, but I think that’s overstating the case. Only Aerosmith’s “Come Together” works, and of course it was the only real hit. The movie ends with a group sing-along of the title track that's obviously intended as a tribute to the famous Sgt. Pepper album cover, but is more like dying and going to ’70s Celebrity Hell. Among the luminaries on hand are Carol Channing, Sha Na Na, Wolfman Jack, Leif Garrett, and Seals and Crofts. It’s certainly a thrill.

Quotable Quote: “She came in through the bathroom window.”

2008 Equivalent: The obvious choice would be Julie Taymor’s Beatles musical Across the Universe, but unfortunately that came out last year. So I’ll have to go with Mamma Mia!

Previously on Summer of '78: Revenge of the Pink Panther

Take Five: Gotta Get A Guru

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:55:00 GMT

Mike Myers' not-so-glorious return to the big screen, The Love Guru -- also known as Austin Powers IV and Verne Troyer's Pleading E-Mails Finally Pay Off -- opens everywhere today, and critics couldn't be more disappointed. Not only is it reported to be low on laughs, it's also being criticized as being high on stereotypes; despite his alleged friend and idol Deepak Chopra coming to his aid, Myers has been attacked for his stereotyping of Asian Indians and his portrayal of a cartoonish, caricatured guru. But let's face it: Hollywood has always loved its gurus, spiritual masters, and wise old mystics from the subcontinent. Hardly had the Beatles falled under the influence of the Maharishi than Hollywood followed suit; here's a look at some of the more memorable wise men of the East that the movie business has given us.

THE LOVED ONE (1965)

One of the few countercultural satires from the 1960s to hold up in the modern era, Tony Richardson's The Loved One holds up for two reasons: first, it was based on an Evelyn Waugh novel from nearly two decades prior and isn't quite as tarred, as a result, by the hippie-dippie vibe of its time; and second, it's got an impeccable crew behind the camera, from Richardson to cinematographer Haskell Wexler to skilled, hip screenwriters Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern. This satire of capitalism run amok in the funereal industry crams so many jokes into its two-hour running time that it's almost impossible to keep up with them all, but make sure you don't miss gravel-throated character actor Lionel Stander as the Guru Brahmin, one of the first-ever big-screen gurus -- and one of the first to be portrayed as a bumbling fraud.

CANDY (1968)

This big-screen adaptation of the Mason Hoffenberg novel (actually the infamous Terry Southern writing under a pseudonym) is generally regarded as a major failure. It's not that there weren't talented people involved -- besides Southern himself, and his co-writer Buck Henry, the cast is crammed with fine actors -- but the entire film seems to go off the rails from the very start. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't plenty of bizarre treats for those with the energy to sit through it. This updating of Voltaire's Candide is purely Southern in the sense that authority figures are always portrayed as phony, venal, and couching some grotesque habits or appetites. In this instance, we're treated to the the sight of the monstrour Grindl -- a sex-crazed Hindu guru played by an overheated Marlon Brando -- putting the poor, put-upon Candy in yet another compromising position.

THE PARTY (1968)

All right, so technically, Peter Sellers' Hrundi V. Bakshi ("That is what my name is called") in the Blake Edwards farce The Party isn't a guru. (That title more rightly belongs to Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Sellers in 1979's Being There.) But he is Indian, sort of, and he does speak in Hindi platitudes that those around him mistake for pearls of inscrutable eastern wisdom. For example, when asked who he thinks he is, he responds, "In India, we do not think who we are. We know who we are." Whoa, heavy. The rest of the movie is pretty much straight-up Blake Edwards comic fare, and it falls flat on the stereotypes at times, but a few scenes are still paralytically funny forty years later, especially when a stoned Bakshi comes across a parakeet cage and solemnly intones the name of the birdseed: "Birdy Num Num."

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)

In this stunning, surreal, and nearly incomprehensible masterpiece by ultimate provocatuer Alejandro Jodorowsky, the guru is Horacio Salinas, a Christlike thief who is half savior and half mountebank. Under the tutelage of the Alchemist, a mysterious figure played by Jodorowsky himself, he and his gang of mystical banditos -- each named for a different celestial body -- plan nothing less than an assault on Heaven, where they will depose the reigning gods and take their places. Visually, this is exactly the sort of film people talk about when they talk about crazy European art films: it's bewildering, deliberately offensive, totally impenetrable, and weird for the sake of being weird. It's also absolutely brilliant, and Jodorowsky -- who's the real guru here -- shows us what it might be like inside the mind of the truly enlightened -- and it alternately makes us gasp at its beauty and scares the hell out of us.

HOLY SMOKE (1999)

Jane Campion's weirdest movie -- which, if you think about it, is really saying something -- features the always-engaging Kate Winslet in the role of a young woman who decides to embark on a quest for spiritual self-discovery in the Indian subcontinent. Along the way, she encounters the guru Chiddaatman Baba (played by Dhritiman Chatterjee) and falls under his sway -- and that's just where the movie begins. From there, she is confronted by Harvey Keitel as a deprogrammer -- sorry, "cult exiter" -- hired by her family to get her back, and discovers that he's not without his own guru-like tendencies. A battle of wills, intellects and bodies ensue over the terrain of feminism, spirituality and sexuality, and the movie degenerates into a bit of a chaotic mess, but it's at least a glorious mess with two terrific actors like Keitel and Winslet at the fore.

Famous Last Words: Round 1, Week 11

Paul Clark — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"You're a swine." This line, the final payoff to a running joke between band manager Norm (Norman Rossington) and his antagonistic charge John Lennon (John Lennon), is often cited as the final piece of dialogue in Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night! Less frequently quoted is the film's actual final exchange, which comes from another antagonist duo, Paul McCartney and his clean ol' grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell), just before Paul drops granddad's pile of "signed photos" from the Beatles' helicopter. Either way, A Hard Day's Night remains the best of the Beatles' star vehicles, although Yellow Submarine is a classic in its own right and Help! and Let It Be both have their moments. I intended the quote as something of a stumper, but many of you weren't fooled. Congrats to those who got it.

Two weeks to go, and there's a tight race for the three prizes. Time to separate the gender-neutral adults from the similarly gender-neutral children:

“Seal this room for official investigation. And bring me my horse. I have much to do. Now!”

Submit your guesses to famouslastwords@nerve.com. For the rules of the game, click here. And remember, all submissions must be received no later than 11:59 PM Eastern next Wednesday. Good luck!

The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History, Part 1

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

With a few notable exceptions, the elaborate main title sequence has gone the way of the drive-in double feature. In fact, many of today’s movies eschew opening credits altogether, opting to plunge the audience directly into the experience and saving the who-did-whats for last. There’s something to be said for that, but we feel a vital part of the moviegoing experience is being neglected, whether it’s the establishment of tone or mood, or just a playful visual riff on the film’s themes. Join us now for a journey of sight and sound we like to call The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History.

PSYCHO (1960)

If you only know the name of one title designer- and chances are you do- the designer would almost certainly be Saul Bass. Before Bass came on the scene, the opening titles of films were mostly utilitarian, occasionally interesting to look at but primarily a way to honor the studio's obligations to the principal cast and crew. But this began to change after Bass was hired by Otto Preminger to design the opening credits to The Man With the Golden Arm, with his cutout-style animation working in tandem with Elmer Bernstein's score to create a title sequence that's arguably as good as the film that follows. Bass went on to work with Preminger numerous times, as well as filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Robert Aldrich, John Frankenheimer, Robert Wise, and later, Martin Scorsese. But for our money, Bass was never better than when designing titles for Alfred Hitchcock, which he did on three occasions. Any of these (the other two being Vertigo and North by Northwest) would be a worthy entry for this list, but we're going with their final collaboration, 1960's Psycho. For one thing, it's the most deceptively simple of Bass' classic output, with little more than white titles on a black background occasionally shoved aside by grey bars. A perfect rhythmic match to Bernard Herrmann's legendary score, Bass' titles are a classic case of "less is more"- a more complex animation might have given the game away, but Bass preserves the mystery of what is to come while still managing to set the tone for the film before we even see a frame shot by Hitchcock. And this was Bass' greatest breakthrough, to take what was once considered an overture to the feature film and turn it into an organic element of the movie itself.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964)

Few people involved in the making of A Hard Day's Night had particularly high expectations for its quality. The producers of the film intended it to be a cash-in on Beatlemania, which they then believed would be short-lived, and its potential took a backseat in their minds to that of a tie-in soundtrack album. However, from the legendary opening chord it was clear to audiences that A Hard Day's Night was much more than a quickie B-movie. Somehow, director Richard Lester had taken the budgetary limits that were placed on him by the money men and flipped them around to his aesthetic advantage. Except for the priceless comic dialogue, everything that makes the film great is in evidence during the opening credits. The black-and-white camera work, intended as a cost-cutting measure, gives the film a scruffy documentary feel, never more so than during the opening titles when the Beatles are mobbed and chased through the streets by actual fans. The sense of humor that permeates the film makes multiple appearances here, as when band manager Norm, for no good reason, struggles with a container of milk. But the most revolutionary element of these credits is the way Lester and editor John Jympson cut the sequence to the rhythm of the title tune, creating an early ancestor to the modern-day music video. As much as they (and the film itself, for that matter) have been imitated and parodied since its release, the original titles for A Hard Day's Night still elicit the same amount of infectious glee they did more than four decades ago.

GOLDFINGER (1964)

The Screengrab legal department has informed us that the inclusion of at least one James Bond title sequence is mandatory on a list such as this, and after careful consideration, we realized there was really only one choice. First of all, Shirley Bassey’s rendition of the title track is clearly the greatest of all 007 theme songs, despite what you Duran Duran fans think. Secondly, although Maurice Binder is justly praised for his many groovy Bond openings, it was graphic designer Robert Brownjohn who established the template of projecting images from the film onto the semi-nude bodies of lovely young ladies, an achievement we rank just below the discovery of the polio vaccine. In this case, of course, those semi-nude bodies are tinted gold, the crowning touch that pushes this one over the top.

DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Some observers, looking on Stanley Kubrick's body of work, have concluded that the man who made HAL 9000 a movie star must have been a misanthrope. But maybe it was just that he loved machines so much that he had little affection left over to bestow on human beings. Consider Dr. Strangelove, a film in which there is no trace of romance and little human warmth, and in which sex is a mysterious offscreen force that makes men in the war room snigger in anticipation of post-apocalyptic orgies and that compels the director to show us George C. Scott in open shirt and shorts. But then there is, at the very opening, that entrancing aerial ballet, with the military jets appearing to get it on, while music that suggests a romantic ballad is heard accompanying the credits. In its way, it may be the last real love scene that Kubrick ever shot. In his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, he tried to generate the same kind of heat with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman standing in for the airplanes, and the fact that he was not fully successful may prove that Scientologists are partly human after all. Or maybe it just proves that there are machines and then there are machines.

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Early in Sam Peckinpah's bloody Western masterpiece, there is a sequence, involving a shoot out between two factions (the outlaw gang of the title and the equally heedless, heartless "law men" on their trail) that lays waste to the town's main street, that (among other things) serves notice to the audience that this is not your father's cowboy movie. In order to minimize the number of paying customers who died of massive coronaries during the film's first fifteen minutes, it behooved Peckinpah and his collaborators to prepare viewers as best they could by making with the ominousness. This sequence--with the credits flashing onscreen as the images of the Bunch making their way into town keep freezing and turning to black and white, like cloud formations designed to signal that anyone who sees them had best build themselves an ark--do the trick nicely. No small degree of credit should go to Jerry Fielding, whose music sets a tone both lyrically elegaic and deeply scary. And the concluding freeze frame of William Holden declaiming the line, "If they move--kill 'em!" as that leading candidate for most beautiful four-word phrase in the English language, "Directed by Sam Peckinpah", appears alongside his head, is both a great in-joke and a heartening declaration of personal responsibility on the part of the artist.

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978)

“You will believe a man can fly,” said the famous tagline of Hollywood’s first big-budget superhero movie. We didn’t, quite – the movie had innumerable problems, and while it set a precedent for movies based on comic books to be profitable and even worth watching, it should be remembered more for being the first than anything like the best. But if there was one moment when it reached perfection, it was its opening credit sequence. A testament to the power of simplicity, the credits beautifully conjured the eternal four-color appeal of comic books by giving us nothing more or less than a simple backdrop of stars (occasionally broken up by something – a nebula? A muscled arm? A fluttering cape?) and the cast and crew of the movie rushing past us in a glorious and understated conjuration of classic comic book cover design. Having already brought together the perfect visual elements, the filmmakers go us one better – and cement Superman’s status as having one of the great credit sequences of all time – by hiring John Towner Williams to produce what is arguably his finest main theme. Williams’ compositions are all too often obvious and overbearing, but here, the triumphant but never aggressive or clamorous tone of the Superman theme fit the mood perfectly. Williams, despite having one of the most storied careers of any film composer, never again managed to so quite so exactly capture the feel of a film in its main title; Hollywood legend has it that, upon hearing it for the first time, producer Alexander Salkind bellowed to him “You’ve saved my movie!”

- Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Read Part 2 of this feature

David Watkin, 1925-2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Cinematographer David Watkin has died of cancer at the age of 82, at his home in Brighton, England. Watkin developed his skills after joining the Southern Railway Film Unit as an assistant in 1948. He branched into work on TV commercials in the early 1960s, where he met the director Richard Lester. Lester hired him to shoot his 1965 film The Knack and subsequently worked with him on Help!, How I Won the War, The Bed Sitting Room and Cuba. In those movies Watkins demonstrated a mastery of a wide range of styles, ranging from the cinema-verite vaudeville of Lester's Beatles films to the Godardisms of How I Won the War, but their best work together may well have been in The Three Musketeers (1973) and its companion piece The Four Musketeers (shot at the same time as the first film but released separately a year later) and the 1976 Robin and Marian, with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the middle-aged Robin Hood and Maid Marian. In those movies, Watkin, famous for his mastery of soft light, somehow achieved a romantic period look while incorporating his director's love of slapstick and visual clutter.

Watkin, who wrote two books of autobiography, Why Is There Only One Word for Thesaurus, which came out in 1998, and Was Clara Schumann a Fag Hag?, which was published only recently. Watkin always strove to give the impression that he was just a guy who knew how to work a camera who made his living shooting movies and who had a whole other compartment of his life devoted to the things he really cared about. But if he saw himself as a mere technician, he was deeply committed to his craft, and was constantly experimenting and extending the reach of the technology he worked with. (He invented a system of lights that made it easier for cinematographers to get better, soft effects during night shoots. Watkin, who was aparently a bit of a camp, was known to friends and co-workers by the nickname "Wendy", and the lighting system he devised became known as "the Wendy Light.") Besides his work with Lester, Watkins's proudest professional moments included Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Chariots of Fire (1981), Yentl (1983), and Out of Africa (1985), for which he won an Academy Award. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Society of Cinematographers in 2004.

From The Beatles To Batman

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Chicago was the official stand-in for Gotham City in Batman Begins; this time around, in The Dark Knight, it'll be Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles. Much of the primary filming of the new Batman sequel was done in the northwestern industrial city, and it features a number of noteworthy landmarks from the area, including the waterfront, the Swansea power station, and London's Piccadilly Circus. According to an article in Liverpool's Echo newspaper, municipal leaders are hoping that the presumed success of the movie will help Liverpool become a tourist draw and boost foreign visitors to the Culture City.

We suppose there are worse things, as far as tourist attractions go, but do the Liverpudlian city fathers really think people are going to line up to visit a city whose primary attraction is that it's constantly being menaced by the Joker?

Today in the Nerve Film Lounge/From the Nerve Film Issue

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

In the Film Lounge:

American Gangster: "It's not just that other movies and TV shows have been here. It's that they've done it better."

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten: Review coming soon.

Help!: "It's the weakest Beatles movie, but that's not to deny its pleasures."

And from the Nerve Film Issue:

The Manhood Behind the Mustache: Ada Calhoun interviews Rob Perri, the director of a gonzo "documentary" about Mets legend Keith Hernandez.

To Sleep With Anger: Bilge Ebiri traces the long, strange career of Kenneth Anger.

Character Types: Nicole Ankowski figures out which Drew Barrymore or John Cusack archetype you're dating.

We're All Replicants Here: I finally get to wax rhapsodic about Blade Runner.

— Peter Smith

Take Five: Rock Stars

Peter Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Hollywood loves a rock star, especially if they have the good grace to die early and provide the scriptwriter with a nice tidy ending that doesn’t involve getting old and boring. With Control, Anton Corbijn’s celebrated directorial debut, opening this weekend, we’ll get to see how the movies do with the compellingly tragic story of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis; his cult status, enigmatic qualities and spectacular suicide would seem to make him an ideal candidate for big-screen immortality. But while we wait for this and Todd Haynes’ Dylan biopic I’m Not There to hit our local screens, we can always immerse ourselves in previous big-screen treatments of rock and rollers — both real and imaginary — that Hollywood has brought us.

THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (1978)

It wasn’t really until the 1970s that Hollywood came to terms with the idea that rock music wasn’t some passing fad (check out, oh, say, any movie about rock 'n' roll made during the 1960s as evidence), but they figured out quickly enough that the best rock star was a dead rock star. The first truly successful rock biopic wasn’t really the stuff of Hollywood legend — it played awfully fast and loose with the historical facts, and its script set a hokey, faux-spiritual tone that a lot of later movies would follow — but it’s worth watching for a standout lead performance as the chief Cricket by a pre-laughingstock Gary Busey, and excellent supporting roles by Charles Martin Smith and Conrad Janis.

SID AND NANCY (1986)

Very few people were in as good a position to make the quintessential punk-rock biopic than Alex Cox. He’d already proven with Repo Man that he was probably the only director of the 1980s who really understood punk-rock music, and with Sid and Nancy, he managed to strike just the right tone of empathy and tragedy. Gary Oldman, who'd go on to have a stellar career, does a fantastic job playing the born-to-die hellraiser Sid Vicious; Chloe Webb, who wouldn’t, is equally fantastic as the doomed Nancy Spungeon. A depressing but essential rock 'n' roll biography.

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? (1993)

Falling into a lot of the same traps as The Buddy Holly Story (and, for that matter, a hundred other rock biographies), this look at the surprising career arc of Tina Turner falls into the trap of beatifying its subject — not surprising, given that it’s based on her own autobiography. It also spends so much time demonizing Ike Turner as an abusive monster (which he was) that it doesn’t really convey the sense of him as a musical genius (which he also was). Still, it’s redeemed by winning performances in the lead roles by Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. Ike’s own autobiography remains unfilmed.

BACKBEAT (1994)

Possibly due to the notoriously litigious nature of the surviving members of the band, Hollywood has always had a standoffish approach to telling stories about the life and times of the biggest rock band in history. Maybe it’s because of the approach this nearly forgotten independent flick took towards the development of the Beatles that it managed to succeed on its own terms. Telling the story of the early days of the band and focusing on the forgotten Stu Sutcliffe, it’s by turns hokey and transcendent, and manages like few films before or since to make something fresh out of one of the most-told stories in pop music history.

VELVET GOLDMINE (1998)

Todd Haynes’ underappreciated interpretation of the glam rock era doesn’t name any names — it doesn’t have to. We all know that Jonathan Rhys Meyers is playing a veiled version of the chameleonoid David Bowie, and that a magnetically sexy Ewan McGregor is an amalgam of Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain. And, in a way, the approach couldn’t be more fitting — the glam era was all about radical reinvention, fluctuating identities, and sexual ambiguity, and that’s what Haynes delivers in spades, along with a healthy dose of political paranoia, divine mystery and straight-up rock and roll fun.

— Leonard Pierce