The Screengrab : the dead zone

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like To See (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

WHIT STILLMAN (& CHRIS EIGEMAN)

Like caviar or triple-malt scotch, the films of Whit Stillman are rarified, WASPy treats best savored while the rest of the world noshes on Big Macs and beer. Around the time Richard Linklater was eavesdropping on his beloved Austin eccentrics in Slacker and Kevin Smith was chronicling the lives of hyper-articulate, dirty-minded New Jersey wage slaves in Clerks, Stillman’s indie debut, Metropolitan, focused on yet another chatty, self-contained subculture: the privileged debutantes and awkward urban haute bourgeoisie of the Upper East Side twentysomething social circuit. Dry, sardonic Chris Eigeman and nervous, schleppy Taylor Nichols were Metropolitan’s standouts, and Stillman wisely paired the sweet-and-sour comic duo as brothers in his follow-up, Barcelona, a witty, extremely low-concept picaresque about boorish Americans abroad in 1980s Spain. Eigeman also starred in The Last Days of Disco, the final installment of the director’s overeducated white people trilogy (and also his last film to date). For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, given its thematic and tonal similarity to its predecessors, Disco (which also features Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard) was considered a disappointment by most fans and critics (if not by Stillman himself, who enjoyed the tale of bed and club-hopping yuppies enough to retell the story again a few years later as a fake roman-a-clef in the voice of one of the film’s characters). Sadly, Stillman’s vision was too wordy, insular and quirky even for art house audiences, making it impossible in recent years for him to finance subsequent projects, the worst result of which (to my way of thinking) is the resultant lack of good roles for the hilarious (and criminally underused) Eigeman. Yet the Internet Movie Database says that Stillman is currently adapting Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and though no cast is listed yet, with luck maybe it’s a good sign that Eigeman (recently Spirit Award-nominated for his directorial debut, Turn the River) will someday appear in front of the camera again and not just behind it.

BROOKE ADAMS

In the late '70s and early '80s, Adams' dark-haired beauty, sense of fun, and tantalizing hint of neurosis (in such films as Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Tell Me a Riddle, The Dead Zone, and Almost You) made her the thinking horndog's indie movie star of choice, but then she drifted out of sight. She only turned up in movies a couple of times during the '90s, most notably in Alison Anders's 1992 Gas Food Lodging. That same year, she married Tony Shalhoub, with whom she had a daughter the next year. In 2002, she had her only big movie role of recent years in Made-Up, a charming but barely seen comedy that Shalhoub co-starred in and directed, from a script by her sister, Lynne Adams. About the only other way to have gazed on her in recent years would be to monitor Shalhoub's TV series; she's made guest appearances on both Wings and Monk. So long as they're happy, I'm happy. I miss her, though.

MARE WINNINGHAM

In 1985, Winningham co-starred in the prototypical Brat Pack movie St. Elmo's Fire, when she was 26. Dramatically, she was at a disadvantage for being cast as the least emotional, mildest mannered of the seven lead characters, though she also had an edge in that she was the only one of the movie's stars, besides Ally Sheedy, who could act a lick. (At the time, anyway: Rob Lowe had his moments fifteen years later on The West Wing.) Winningham has the kind of virtues that can easily be cast as negatives, but she's such a capable, talented actress that her honesty and decency can seem radiant and illuminating rather than starchy and prim; to fully appreciate her, check out the 1995 Georgia, where her superb performance as a hard-working, mess-cleaning musician can be viewed aside Jennifer Jason Leigh's gruesomely self-immolating, exhibitionistic display as her self-immolating sister. The worst thing that could ever be said of Winningham is that her honorable acting style has sometimes failed to make the dull, underwritten roles she's been stuck with seem livelier than they are, but anyone who saw her as the unconventional love of Anthony Edwards' life in Miracle Mile (1989) or the blubbering girlfriend who's quick to dump the jobless Timothy Hutton in Made in Heaven (1987) knows that her gifts include a wild streak. As she enters her middle years -- she turns fifty next year -- it sure would be something to get to see the nice girl be given the chance to cut the hell loose.

PAMELA REED

It's easy to imagine aspiring directors in Hollywood being sent forth into the valley armed with one basic, flawless piece of no-brainer advice: if you have a scene that you want the audience to stay awake for, stick Pamela Reed onscreen. Since 1980, her first year in movies, inviting David Carradine and Sonny Landham to have a knife fight for her honor (Carradine: "What does the winner get?" Reed: "Nothin' you ain't both already had.") in The Long Riders and presenting Paul La Mat with a marriage proposal that should have come with a free toaster in Melvin and Howard, she's been practically storming off the screen and slapping the cell phones out of people's hands. Why has this woman never been offered the chance to carry a movie? Is it thought that a woman with her energy and internal strength would alienate audiences if they had to put up with her for more than a few scenes at a time? Sure, that makes sense: it's not as if Bette Davis had a career. But I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be grateful for what we get of her, especially given that she's spent most of the past decade hanging around TV sets. This did give her the chance to revive one of her greatest roles, the fully caffeinated political campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh of Robert Alman's Tanner '88 and its 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. On the other hand, that Jericho thing didn't do anybody any good. She belongs on the big screen, where she can take on dragons big enough to make it seem like a fair fight (as does her co-star from Tanner and The Right Stuff, Veronica Cartwright, and Amy Madigan, another actress who doesn't need to chug kerosene before she arrives on the set to breathe fire).

PIPER PERABO

Can it really be called a comeback if a star never quite hit it big in the first place? Consider the sad case of Piper Perabo. In 2000, she was being called Hollywood's It Girl, with two high-profile projects on the horizon. Unfortunately for her, those projects were The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Coyote Ugly. The former was a notorious stinker in which Perabo's performance got lost amid the second-rate animation and hammy turns from Robert DeNiro and Rene Russo. The latter was a modest success, but one that had less to do with its nominal lead than audiences flocking to see scantily-clad dancing female bartenders. Having gained no momentum whatsoever from her alleged star-making vehicles, Perabo's career quickly hit the skids, with the actress appearing in a string of lame-brained thrillers and forgettable comedies, with the occasional supporting role in the Steve Martin-headed Cheaper By the Dozen franchise. Eight years after being declared the Next Big Thing, Perabo was last seen playing second banana to a cast of talking Chihuahuas. Frankly, that's a shame, because despite the disappointing trajectory of her career, Perabo remains a vibrant, fetching actress with an infectious smile and a surprisingly soulful side. Just look at her brief appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige -- as Hugh Jackman's ill-fated lover, Perabo brings more genuine spark and feeling to her role than her more tabloid-friendly costar Scarlett Johansson could hope to muster. Even better is 2001's Lost and Delirious, a mostly forgotten Canadian film about teenage sexuality in an ivy-covered boarding school. Perabo steals the show as Paulie, a rebellious young woman nursing a hopeless love for her reluctant classmate. It's a performance that's so white-hot with intensity and charged with eroticism that she eventually becomes more than the film can really take. So why exactly was she last seen in a movie that called for her to bark into a telephone? Your guess is as good as ours.

Click Here For Part One, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

The Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon: The Final Chapter

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Introduction

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

6 p.m. – 8 p.m. CUJO (1983)

My very first published review is lost to the ages. It was a book review I wrote during my freshman year of high school, published in our school newspaper The Schoodic Breeze (derisively known to its detractors among the faculty and student body as The Schoodic Sneeze). The subject was Stephen King’s Cujo, the first of the horrormeister’s books that truly disappointed me. (It wasn’t until many years later I learned King had written most of the book while either drunk or coked-up or both, and had no memory of writing it.) Now, 20-odd years later, I guess I’ve come full circle, writing a review of the movie version of Cujo while too drunk to remember it. (I’m kidding! Maybe.) Here’s the problem: the copy of Cujo I secured (never mind how) turns out to be in Spanish with no subtitles, and there’s no time left to get a new one. I probably missed some of the subtleties in the first half, which mainly consists of scenes of domestic discord amongst the Trenton clan. After checking with Wikipedia, I confirmed that mom Donna (Dee Wallace) is having an affair, dad Vic’s advertising career may be in the hopper because a client’s kiddie cereal is making the wee ones shit pink, and son Tad is afraid of monsters in his closet. When Donna and Tad take the family clunker out to Joe Camber’s garage on the outskirts of town, Tad has a real monster to worry about: Cujo, the Camber family St. Bernard, has been bitten by a bat and gone rabid. The second half of the movie mainly consists of Donna and Tad trapped in their car, which the mangy mutt occasionally attacks. It’s not that scary, probably because no matter how menacing you try to make a St. Bernard look, he still just comes off as dopey and lovable. One thing in the book’s favor: King kills off the whiny kid, while the movie lets him live.

8 p.m. – 10 p.m. CAT’S EYE (1985)

Cujo director Lewis Teague also helmed this trilogy of tales, loosely connected by a wandering cat. There’s an amusing moment near the beginning when the cat is chased by Cujo and they are nearly hit by Christine, but Teague ruins it by cutting to the “I am Christine” bumper sticker on the red Fury. Oh, now I get it! Anyway, the three stories here are presented more for amusement than scares – at least, I hope that was the idea. In the first, James Woods attempts to quit smoking with the aid of a shadowy organization that employs extreme measures (such as giving his wife a series of electric shocks the first time he sneaks a butt). In the middle segment, a mobster forces the man who’s been boinking his wife (Robert Hays) to walk all the way around a tall building on a tiny ledge. The finale brings us the return of Drew “Firestarter” Barrymore, who is menaced by a funny little troll in a jester cap. Woods and Alan King provide some chuckles, and I did like that troll – Was there a tiny person in there? A monkey, perhaps? – but this is pretty typical mid-80s cheese. If it’s late at night and you happen upon it on cable, it’s a good movie to semi-watch while conking out on the couch. And by this point in the marathon, I’m doing a lot of conking.

King’s cameo: In addition to the in-joke mentioned above, there’s also a scene with Woods watching The Dead Zone, and another with Barrymore’s mother reading Pet Sematary in bed.

10 p.m. – Midnight SILVER BULLET (1985)

Did someone mention typical mid-80s cheese? I’ve saved the least for last, assuming anyone is still awake out there. Silver Bullet may not actually be the worst King adaptation, but it doesn’t offer much besides a pop culture anthropologist’s glimpse of Ground Zero for modern celebreality rehab shows. Both Corey Haim and Gary Busey appear in this lame werewolf flick, which also features Everett “Big Ed” McGill as the preacher-turned-lycanthrope. (That’s technically a spoiler, I guess, but since everyone with an IQ above room temperature will figure it out five minutes into the movie, it shouldn’t count as one.) Haim is the crippled boy in the souped-up motorized wheelchair Silver Bullet and Busey is his drunken Uncle Red, a part he could play even more convincingly today. Considering that Silver Bullet came out several years after The Howling and American Werewolf in London, it’s remarkable how shoddy the were-suit is. Of course, it’s not quite as shoddy as the Casiotone soundtrack, which conjures all the excitement of a game of Simon. (Ask your drunken uncle, youngsters.)

Well, looks like we made it all the way to the end. Except…wait! I’ve actually been dead since 8 a.m. and the rest of this has been written by the zombie Scott Von Doviak. BWA HA HA HA HA!!!!

Nah, just joking. I meant to say I’ve actually been drunk since 8 a.m. I forget – did we watch Cujo?

Vanishing Act: Michael Cimino

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:30:00 GMT

When contemplating a subject for the “Vanishing Act” column, I often find myself wondering, “Why hasn’t this person worked in so long?” In the case of Michael Cimino, I did not ask this question. My query was more along the lines of, “How many incriminating photos of which top Hollywood executive blowing what particular kind of farm animal did this person have in order to keep working for so long after Heaven’s Gate?”

Indeed, Gate is such a storied, monumental flop in the annals of motion picture history, it’s some sort of credit to Cimino that it took him so long to vanish. This is particularly true when you consider a slate of aborted projects that makes Terry Gilliam look prolific and bankable by comparison. For instance, did you know that at one time, Cimino was actually hired to direct Footloose? Personally, I would like to see documentary footage of the meeting at which this decision was reached. I’d much rather see that than ever again sit through Desperate Hours or Year of the Dragon, two Cimino films that actually were made. (Quoth Footloose producer Craig Zadan: “Cimino wanted to make a darker movie. We wanted to make an entertainment.” And Kenny Loggins rejoiced.)

The man has never lacked for ambition. Other Cimino projects that never got off the drawing board include an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, biopics of Dostoevsky and Janis Joplin, and a multi-generational American Indian saga to be filmed entirely in the Sioux language. At one time or another, legend has it that he was slated to direct The Dogs of War, The King of Comedy, The Dead Zone and Mutiny on the Bounty. (There’s gotta be a sequel to Final Cut in here somewhere, right?)

Cimino’s final completed feature to date is 1996’s The Sunchaser, starring Woody Harrelson as a wealthy doctor who is kidnapped by a terminally ill gangbanger hoping to find a magical lake of healing. Grossing a grand total of $23,107 at the box office, the barely released Sunchaser appears to have done what Heaven’s Gate could not: make Cimino a complete untouchable.

In 2001, Cimino published his first novel, Big Jane. The following year he gave a rare interview to the Independent, dispelling rumors that he’d had a sex change operation and talking up a big-screen comeback with an adaptation of Man’s Fate, “Andre Malraux's dense, heady novel about the squelched 1927 Communist uprising in Shanghai.” It never happened.

The good news is: they love him in France! Last year, Cimino earned his first film credit in over a decade, contributing the three-minute segment “No Translation Needed” to the omnibus film Chacun son cinema. Don’t call it a comeback yet, but at least it’s a start.

(Belated) Take Five: Stephen King

Peter Smith — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

So, have you heard of this Stephen King fellow? Apparently he’s pretty widely read. Hs popularity as a novelist is matched only by his profligacy — he’s written over thirty novels and hundreds of short stories on his way to becoming one of the best-selling authors of all time. This level of popularity is like heroin to Hollywood producers, and adaptations of his books and stories — as well as original screenplays by King himself, an inveterate movie nerd — have led to an astonishing 100+ films and television shows. Like their source material, though, they’re a decidedly mixed bag: for every Shawshank Redemption, there’s a Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return. And just as King enjoys a decidedly muddled critical reception, films made from his works, while occasionally made by talented filmmakers who find in the material the bones of something great, tend towards third-rate exploitation horror. Still, with The Mist having opened last week, it’s good to remember that a number of genuinely worthwhile projects have made the translation from the mind of King to the big screen. Here are five of the best.

CARRIE (1976)

The first hint that Stephen King’s novels might be the stuff of memorable movies came in 1976, when Brian DePalma got hold of his tale of a shy, stunted teenage girl who happened to have vast telekinetic powers. As the rest of this list will make clear, it’s no secret that King’s books tended to make good films only in the hands of a competent director, but DePalma in particular blew the doors off of this one, picking out the meaty insides and discarding the extraneous baggage. Ratcheting up the tension of King’s patented adolescent-angst narrative and turning the end into something beyond gore and well into Grand Guignol territory, DePalma also delivers one of the best jump-out-of-your-seat shocks in horror movie history near the end of Carrie.

SALEM'S LOT (1979)

The story of a small town infested by vampires was one of King’s first big successes as a novelist, and this TV movie adaptation — helmed by horror maven and Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper — does a terrific job conveying its sense of paranoia and night terror without resorting to gore or cheap thrills. Indeed, working within the restrictions of television seemed to suit Hooper and screenwriter Paul Monash, who paced and teased the moments of shock out quite effectively. They’re also aided greatly by a cast crammed full of top-shelf character actors, including Elisha Cook Jr., Fred Willard, James Mason, Ed Flanders and George Dzundza.

THE SHINING (1980)

Not a lot of genuinely great directors have taken on the works of Stephen King, but Stanley Kubrick was unquestionably the greatest. Made only three years after the publication of the novel, The Shining is a work of genuine genius, containing one of Jack Nicholson’s greatest screen performances, some absolutely tremendous camerawork, and a sense of creeping horror that’s absent in many of the plodding, obvious shock films made from King's work. (Amazingly, the best-ever movie adaptation of a Stephen King novel was one of King’s least favorites; he later helped a far-inferior TV movie reworking into existence.)

CREEPSHOW (1982)

In a perfectly wonderful and appropriate twist of fate, one of Stephen King’s best friends is zombie auteur George Romero, and while Creepshow, their only true collaboration (King wrote the screenplay and Romero directed) isn’t the best movie based on the horror writer’s works, it’s easily the most enjoyable. The two sought to recreate the goofy, gory tone of the EC horror comics they had both enjoyed in their youth, and they succeeded to an admirable degree — and if the overall feel of the movie, as well as a hysterically nutty performance by King himself, are any indication, they had a hell of a time doing it.

THE DEAD ZONE (1983)

The story of a man who can see the future, and whether or not he has the chance to alter it, is a pretty whoozy old trope in science fiction, and to be honest, it doesn’t fare all that much better even in the hands of a man who, like Stephen King, can lend a patina of respectability to even the hoariest stock plots. David Cronenberg does what he can with the material he has, but it’s not the script or the direction that makes The Dead Zone worth watching: it’s the lead performances, most especially Christopher Walken (sublimely nutty as usual) in the role of the seer and Martin Sheen (hamming it up like nobody’s business) as a politician he suspects may someday trigger a nuclear war.

— Leonard Pierce