The Screengrab : the fall

Roger Ebert Supersizes Top 10 of 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Is 2008 ending early? I didn’t get the memo, but I do know that Roger Ebert traditionally waits until after Christmas to unveil his top ten list because I’m always up at the Von Doviak ancestral manse in Maine when it appears online. This year, however, Ebert has jumped out early – and not only that, he’s doubled the content. “In these hard times, you deserve two ‘best films’ lists for the price of one,” Ebert writes. “It is therefore with joy that I list the 20 best films of 2008, in alphabetical order. I am violating the age-old custom that film critics announce the year's 10 best films, but after years of such lists, I've had it. A best films list should be a celebration of wonderful films, not a chopping process.”

You’ve gotta admire his enthusiasm after so many years in the game, especially if, like me, you have about three movies on your list and are scrambling to catch up with any possible contenders you may have missed. In fact, since Ebert presents an entirely separate list of documentaries, as well as a “special jury prize,” he actually has 26 movies on his list. Since he declines to rank them, I can’t tell you which is his favorite, but the most surprising selection has to be The Fall. “Tarsem's film is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free fall from reality into uncharted realms.” I didn’t catch this one myself, but our own Phil Nugent dissents.

That special jury prize went to My Winnipeg. “Guy Maddin's latest dispatch from inside his imagination is a "history" of his home town, which becomes a mixture of the very slightly plausible, the convincing but unlikely, the fantastical, the fevered, the absurd, the preposterous, and the nostalgic. Oddly enough, when it's over, you have a deeper and, in a crazy way, more "real" portrait of Winnipeg than a conventional doc might have provided--and certainly a far more entertaining one.” Among the documentaries singles out for praise is Encounters at the End of the World, which director Werner Herzog dedicated to Ebert. Logrolling in our time!

Here’s the full list.

Related:
Roger Ebert Gives Himself Thumbs Down
Classless Man in Voiceless Brawl

DVD Digest for September 9, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Another slow week here at DVD Digest, with a handful of worthwhile classic DVDs and plenty of new editions of horror favorites to balance the small amount of quality new releases.

While next week is slated to bring a trio of wonderful new classics on DVD, this week your best bet is Warner’s new “Deluxe Edition” of Cool Hand Luke (also Blu-Ray). In addition, this week sees the release of the three pressing to date of The Big Lebowski (Universal), although the new “10th Anniversary Edition” has a number of interesting-looking new features that weren’t present in the previous “Achievers’ Edition”, notably featurettes that address the cult-classic status of the film and the Lebowski Fest phenomenon that has sprung up around it. And in advance of Halloween, the studios have begun re-releasing their horror classics, from the collection Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 (which includes Chandu the Magician, Dr. Renault’s Secret, and Dragonwyck) to more recent titles like Child’s Play 20th Anniversary Edition and Pumpkinhead Collector’s Edition (both MGM).

If you’re in the market for something newer still, this week’s recent releases on DVD include: Sarah Palin Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama (Universal, also Blu-Ray); the long-awaited onscreen duel between Jackie Chan and Jet Li The Forbidden Kingdom (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Tarsem’s The Fall (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Helen Hunt’s directorial debut, Then She Found Me (Image); and The Seed, the latest from schlock auteur Uwe Boll.

Continuing the crush of television DVDs that invariably coincides with the new TV season, this week brings: David Caruso removing his sunglasses dramatically in CSI: Miami Season 6 (Paramount); more sexy medical drama in Gray’s Anatomy Season 4 (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Patricia Arquette in Medium Season 4 (Paramount); the Teen of Steel in Smallville Season 7 (Warner, also Blu-Ray); and America Ferrara frumping up in Ugly Betty Season 2 (Disney).

This week’s Blu-Ray only releases include: the football-centric double feature of Rudy and Jerry Maguire (both Sony); Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch and Day Watch (both Fox); and Fox’s The Omen Collection, which includes the first three theatrical features, with the original film also available separately.

Finally, I can’t let this week’s DVD Digest pass without mentioning the release of House of the Dead Director’s Cut: “Funny Version” (Lionsgate). Now, I’ve gone on record as a defender of the aforementioned Dr. Boll, and if nothing else this new, allegedly more comedic cut of Boll’s reviled 2003 film shows that at least the good doctor has a sense of humor about his work. But at the same time, this feels to me like an empty gesture. After all, with a movie as unintentionally funny as House of the Dead, is there really a need to add more comedy? Or is Boll just reaching out to his detractors by acknowledging that the film is laughable, and trying to add even more laughs for their benefit? If so, Boll could prove to be a much cannier master of spin than we’d originally thought.

Indie Box Office Roundup: Weekend of May 16-18, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Nearly a year ago, Screengrab’s Bryan Whitefield sang the praises of a little Norwegian stunner called Reprise (Miramax), calling it “modern filmmaking at its most inventive.” As it turns out, somebody was actually listening. Nearly $50,000 worth of somebodies, to be precise. Reprise, directed by Joachim Trier, effortlessly placed first in this weekend’s Indie Box Office, grossing a per-screen average of $16,353 in three venues, and nearly doubling the next-best contender. Expect good word of mouth to help the film’s box office as it expands its release to Chicago, DC, Boston and Minneapolis in the coming weeks.

Following at the heels of Reprise was a trio of documentaries jockeying for the second-place spot. Of the three, the highest-grossing was Christopher Zalla’s immigration-themed Sangre de Mi Sangre (IFC Films). It was followed closely by the Doug Pray’s eccentric surfer profile Surfwise (Magnolia), and America the Beautiful (Arenas Entertainment), a muckraker about the effects that the modeling and fashion industries have on the health of young women. Rounding out the top five was Tarsem’s dark fantasy The Fall (Roadside Attractions).

Also of note this week was the unstoppable Richard Jenkins juggernaut, which carried The Visitor into the top 10 overall for the first time since its release and took its overall grosses upwards of $3 million. Not bad for a sleeper about a bald (although admittedly awesome) character actor learning to play the drum. Could the deafening word of mouth for the film turn Jenkins into an awards-season contender? Stay tuned.

Top 10: Weekend of May 16-18, 2008:
1. Reprise [Miramax] ($16,353 per screen)
2. Sangre de Mi Sangre [IFC Films] ($8,385)
3. Surfwise [Magnolia Pictures] ($6,342)
4. America The Beautiful [Arenas Entertainment] ($6,169)
5. The Fall [Roadside Attractions] ($5,921)
6. Roman De Gare [IDP/Samuel Goldwyn Films] ($4,492)
7. Bloodline [Cinema Libre] ($4,292)
8. My Father My Lord [Kino International] ($4,016)
9. Yella [Cinema Guild] ($3,884)
10. Up the Yangtze [Zeitgeist] ($3,659)

Source: IndieWire.

"The Fall": Pretty, Vacant

Phil Nugent — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:35:00 GMT

The Fall, the second feature from Tarsem Singh, the commercial-and-music-video director still probably best known for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion", finally crawls into theaters this weekend, a couple of years after it was unveiled at the Toronto Film Festival. Singh's first movie was 2000's The Cell, an eye-popping, empty-headed thriller in which he deployed his elaborately detailed visual imagination to depict "the mind of a serial killer." (Turned out the poor guy had a Damien Hirst exhibition going on in there.) Like some other directors who made the leap from music videos to the big screen, Singh showed a faith in his own visual flash that was so intense and single-minded that it bordered on outright contempt for representational details and other essentials of basic storytelling: how else to explain the decision to cast Jennifer Lopez as a visionary scientist and Vince Vaughn as a morally stern FBI agent? Damned if The Fall, which is based on a screenplay credited to Singh, Dan Gilroy, and Nico Soultanakis, doesn't turn out to be a self-conscious tribute to the wonders of "storytelling." (It's based on a 1981 Bulgarian movie called Yo Ho Ho, which Singh has acknowledged in interviews but isn't mentioned in the credits.) Lee Pace, bedridden for much of the film yet showing more fire and ardor than he's gotten the chance to show on the cult TV series Pushing Daisies, plays a man lying in a hospital in 1915 Los Angeles and nursing a broken heart: he's been dumped by his girlfriend, who happens to be one of the nurses (Justine Waddell) for another man. The real center of the movie, and the main thing it really has going for it, is a Romanian girl named Catinca Untaru, who's eleven now but was about eight when the movie was shot. She plays a resident of the children's ward who keeps sneaking off to visit Pace, who tells her a story in order to earn her friendship and trust. His secret motive is to persuade her to steal him a dose of morphine strong enough that he can give himself an overdose and kick off.

As that last detail indicates, The Fall has a bellyful of mournful seriousness tucked inside its gleaming shell. It's an innocence versus experience story, with the lonely kid learning about the dark side of life from the self-pitying adult who devalues the gift of story by using it for manipulative purposes. (There might just be an allegory about Hollywood in there somewhere.) Singh puts his stamp on the sequences illustrating the story Pace tells, in which he appears as one of a group of gaudily photogenic heroes who have sworn vengeance on a cruel villain who's done them dirt--and who, inevitably, is played by the same actor (Daniel Caltagrione) who, in the "real world" scenes, plays the new lover of the perfidious nurse. These fantasy sequences, set in fairy-tale desert landscape, have the expected production-design glitter, and even a few traces of wit. (Pace describes one of the heroes as an "Indian", and from his references to the fellow's squaw and wigwam, it clear that he means the Native American kind, but the little girl pictures a swaggering, bearded dude in a green turban and robe.) But the fantasy heroics that the little girl--and the audience--are made to look forward to don't really arrive. Sighe is more interested in playing postmodern games about how Pace's depressed state affects the quality of his storytelling and how the details of the real world leak into the fictional one, as well as with the misery experienced by the characters in the "real world" storyline, which is pretty much a non-starter anyway. And though Catinca Untaru's untutored performance is remarkable and affecting, when things go bad in both worlds, Singhe milks her for tears as ruthlessly as a silent-movie director throwing a puppy off a cliff. It stands to figure that The Fall ends up as a bejewelled blank space: filmmaker who romanticize and mythologize the storytelling process tend to be people who can't tell a story to save their lives. Real storytellers just roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Trailer Review: The Fall

Paul Clark — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I wasn't the biggest fan of Tarsem's first feature The Cell, but his visual sense was undeniable, and in the years since its release I've been curious about what his follow-up would be. The Fall premiered to mixed reviews at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, but if this trailer is any indication the images are as powerful here as in The Cell, if not more so. Parts of the trailer reminded me of the color films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, albeit less cheeky, but the nature of the visuals belies Tarsem's subcontinental origins. But what's particularly impressive is that the film appears to have been made on a relatively low budget, with no big name actors (the closest thing to a star here is a pre-Pushing Daisies Lee Pace) and an independent budget. Yet the trailer is ravishing, and the imprimatur of fellow filmmakers David Fincher and Spike Jonze is a good sign. I couldn't say how widely Roadside Attractions plans to open the film, but I hope that I get a chance to see it on the big screen, which will make it easier to savor the images and overlook any potential narrative hiccups.

Screengrab Movie Poster Preview

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been known to review the occasional movie trailer here at the Screengrab. Some people feel this is unfair – that we are making snap judgments based solely on some marketing executive’s dumbed-down notion of how to sell the product. To which I say: fie! (And I rarely say fie.) You know what would be really unfair? Previewing upcoming movies I know absolutely nothing about based solely on their posters! So let’s do it!

DEAL

Burt Reynolds is the aging gambling legend banned from all the casinos in Vegas and forced to undergo radical reconstructive surgery on his face in order to gain entry. When this duplicity fails due to sophisticated facial recognition technology, Reynolds recruits cocky but raw up-and-coming poker star Bret Harrison, offering to share his tricks of the trade in exchange for a cut of the profits. The two men butt heads, especially when Shannon Elizabeth enters the picture as the naïve cocktail waitress. But surprise! She’s actually conning them both.

DECEPTION

Ewan McGregor thinks he has it all – great job, new house, gorgeous wife Michelle Williams. That is, until mysterious stranger Hugh Jackman shows up. Williams claims he’s her uncle and that he’ll only be staying with them for a few days while he’s in town for a grooming seminar. McGregor begins to grow suspicious when he discovers Jackman’s boxer shorts in his bed. He snaps when he catches Williams and Jackman in the hot tub together, and kills both of them…but Jackman was never really there at all!

FRONTIER(S)

It seemed like such a quaint small town, the perfect place to spend the night while driving cross-country. Little did they know this town was actually populated by CANNIBALISTIC DEVIL WORSHIPPERS!!!

THEN SHE FOUND ME

Helen Hunt is a successful lawyer in New York, falling in love with neighbor Matthew Broderick, the advertising exec she met at Starbucks when he spilled his mochacinno in her lap on the morning of her big trial. All is going well until her estranged mother Bette Midler shows up to beg forgiveness for accidentally killing Hunt’s father with a waffle iron. The healing begins, and Hunt is finally able to get over her lifelong fear of waffles.

THE FALL

OK, this one is a challenge, but I’m gonna say it somehow involves a gay pirate, a time machine and an awful lot of peyote.