The Screengrab : the shining

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

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

Bruce Willis in THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

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

Johnny Depp in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)

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

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

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

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

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

Slim Pickens in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

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

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Nick Schager's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1) DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)
2) THE SHINING (1980)

With all due respect to Stephen King, who famously disliked this adaptation of his novel, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is horror cinema nirvana, an unsettling vision of paternal and spousal madness crafted with the director’s trademark icy precision. Jack Nicholson’s performance is deservedly iconic, yet it’s the disquietingly unnatural atmosphere – generated by, among other things, those little twin ghouls, the nude grandma specter in the bathtub, Looney Tunes cartoons, and subtle allusions to Native American history – that truly turns this haunted hotel tale into a nerve-jangling classic.

3) MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
4) ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
5) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)
6) LE SAMOURAI (1967)
7) STALKER (1979)
8) AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972)

The production of Aguirre: The Wrath of God was so troubled that, as rumor has it, director Werner Herzog either threatened to shoot star Klaus Kinski, or plotted to have his indigenous cast members do the dirty deed once shooting was completed. Such insanity may be fantasy, but it’s in keeping with the spirit of Herzog’s mesmerizing 1972 feature about the titular Spanish conquistador, whose adventurous exploration of the wild unknown in search of greatness makes him a fitting surrogate for the mad genius director.

9) POINT BLANK (1967)
10) CRISS CROSS (1949)

Robert Siodmak is better remembered for 1946’s The Killers, a superb noir in its own right. Yet it’s this relatively unsung gem that stands as the director’s finest work in the genre, a beautifully constructed, sensual and tense thriller – about Burt Lancaster’s lovesick loner returning home to L.A. and becoming embroiled in a love triangle with his ex, Yvonne De Carlo, and her new gangster beau Dan Duryea – that expertly delivers all those things noir is famous for: love, obsession, betrayal, and a fatalism so potent that it leaves a lasting mark.

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

Contributor: Nick Schager

Bloody Valentines: The Worst Relationships in Cinema History (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

To paraphrase Edwin Starr: Valentine’s Day! Huh! What is it good for?

Well...depends who you ask: it certainly didn’t work out too well for the poor Roman priest who got himself beaten, stoned, beheaded (and later canonized) for nuptializing Christian couples out of season, nor for any of the other Catholic martyrs named Valentine whose various grisly fates somehow led to the annual tradition of grown-ass men dropping seventy bucks a pop to have teddy bears in boxer shorts with hearts on them delivered to grown-ass women in the middle of winter.

Scholars blame Geoffrey Chaucer for ruining February 14th by linking a bunch of obscure Roman Catholic feast days with the aggravating concept of courtly love, thus stressing out singles and couples alike for centuries to come with unrealistic, unattainable expectations about all the perfect moments of romance we’re all supposed to be having (instead of weeping lonely tears into our popcorn at solo matinees of He’s Just Not That Into You or forgetting to buy a frickin’ card for our significant others and never hearing the goddamn frickin’ end of it).

It should, of course, be remembered that St. Valentine’s ol’ pagan buddy Cupid is the son of both a goddess of love AND a god of war, and thus not all the couples the little bastard shoots with his arrows wind up living happily ever after. Therefore, as a cheery reminder that things could always be worse in this infernal season of l’amour, your friends-with-benefits here at the Screengrab are proud to present BLOODY VALENTINES: THE WORST RELATIONSHIPS IN CINEMA HISTORY!

PROF. IMMANUEL RATH & LOLA LOLA, THE BLUE ANGEL (1930)

A sort of preemptive riposte to the 20th century's literary canon of professors effectively leveraging their intellectual heft for the purpose of seducing their students, The Blue Angel has stuffy Rath (Emil Jannings) falling for cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) when he goes down to waggle his finger in her face and tell her to stop distracting his students. Instead, she captivates and reduces him to a pathetic spectacle, as pathetic in the public's eyes as he is in hers. If Rath had at least a little touch of submissiveness in him, maybe he'd enjoy being constantly humiliated in a sub-dom 24/7 way; as it is, Lola reduces him to a man with no free will. Dietrich's star was made in this first collaboration with Josef von Sternberg; meanwhile, Jannings' performance is frequently looked down upon as an anachronistic acting style from another age. Which actually makes perfect sense for the character he's playing. As a depiction of a May-December, intellectual-emptyheaded, pompous-earthy, and every other kind of mismatch possible relationship, The Blue Angel isn't painful only because it's more conducive to distanced contemplation and sarcastic laughter than visceral empathy. Should you have extra time at work (should you still be employed, in fact), some kind soul has uploaded the whole German version to YouTube, but the embedding has been disabled, so enjoy the trailer above, then click here to watch the whole thing.

GEORGE & MARTHA, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

There may be bloodier couples in the history of cinema, but there are none whose hatred burned brighter. George and Martha – a small-time failure of a college professor and his crude harpy of a wife, played by real-life couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor – may not want to kill each other, but it’s only because dead they would be past inflicting pain, which is all that keeps them going. Considering that Martha speaks of their marriage in terms of total warfare, and George’s idea of whimsical banter is to point a rifle at his wife’s head during a cocktail party, it’s no surprise that this movie has become shorthand for violently feuding couples. This is a couple that’s beyond mere feuding, but whose initial passion has never soured: it’s been transformed into something just as fiery, a loathing built on complete knowledge of, and complete dependence upon, one another. The film shocks us right out of the box by presenting us with a couple whose fury and loathing for each other is deeper than the love in an any big-screen romance; it then shocks us even further by showing how deeply, albeit bizarrely, they care for each other, and how much more profound their relationship is than the seemingly happy couple that contrasts them.

MICHAEL & KAY CORLEONE, THE GODFATHER (1972) and THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

There's a lesson here that a lot of you girls would do well to heed: when your boyfriend runs off to Sicily without a word, gets married to a perfect stranger he met over there about ten minutes after he got off the boat, and then, after somebody sticks dynamite under the hood of the car and blows her sky high, he shows up where you work, again without a word, and announces that, lucky you, he's looking to fill the position of second wife and he's prepared to consider your qualifications -- honey, take a breath. If you feel swayed by his liquid brown eyes and passionate words, try and think about how you're going to feel waking up next to him in a few years, when the face is set off by a toupee like an earth-tone fireworks display and that insinuating voice keeps erupting "HOO-hah!" Then you tell Casanova that as much as you appreciate the offer, you feel that you might be overqualified on account of your ability to count above ten without taking off your shoes. Unless you've got some kind of fetish for having doors slammed in your face.

JACK & WENDY TORRANCE, THE SHINING (1980)

If you've seen The Shining as many times as I have – and there's very little chance of that – you've probably spent some time speculating about the marriage of Jack and Wendy Torrance. How did they meet? What was the attraction? When did they decide to get married, and didn't they have any friends or family to talk them out of it? Some would point to the obvious incompatibility of the brooding, hot-tempered Jack (Jack Nicholson) and the frail, skittish Wendy (Shelly Duvall) as a flaw in the movie, but to those people I would pose this query: Do you know any married people? Because if you do, surely you are aware that for every couple that seems inevitable and perfect for each other, there are at least three that make no sense whatsoever on any rational level. It's easy to blame Jack for the eventual dissolution of the relationship. He is the guy who starts talking to ghosts and running around with an axe, after all. But let's not let Wendy entirely off the hook. She did go along with a plan that entailed living in total isolation with a man who has a history of alcohol abuse and domestic violence (no matter how much she may have tried to downplay it), and she brought her young son Danny into it. At the very least, she's guilty of poor judgment, but at least it all works out in the end.

FRANK BOOTH & DOROTHY VALLENS, BLUE VELVET (1986)

Frank Booth and Dorothy Vallens, the two emblems of maniacal deviance and defiled virtue (respectively) in David Lynch’s surrealistic neo-noir Blue Velvet, may share things...but love isn’t one of them. Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) is a nightclub singer with a daughter and an air of mystery, which – as Kyle MacLachlan’s amateur sleuth Jeffrey peeps after being shoved, post-blowjob, into a closet – is due to her association with Frank (Dennis Hopper). Frank is a sociopath holding Dorothy’s husband hostage so she might sexually gratify him, and the twisted sadomasochistic tryst (replete with helium inhalations and erotic asphyxiation) that Jeffrey witnesses while hiding in that closet may stand as some of the most disturbingly unsettling material ever shot by the peerlessly out-there Lynch. The couple’s relationship ultimately ends when Jeffrey shoots Frank dead, but this being Lynch, the ensuing happy ending is laced with perversion, due in part to the earlier suggestion that Dorothy, conditioned to Frank’s beatings, has been warped into associating pleasure with pain.

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

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

A Better Travis Bickle for a Better New Year, and Other Great "Resolutions" Movies

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Today is Twelfth Day, the traditional end to the Christmas season for those of us who need a few days for the hangover to die down before we can start thinking about taking down the lights and chucking the tree out the window. So it's not too late to start thinking about taping some New Year's resolutions to the door of the fridge. Not everyone agrees about how much point there is to making New Year's resolutions; the idea behind them is to make some changes that will make your life better, and the world does not lack for evidence that people don't change. But here at the Screengrab, we think about these thing the same way we think about everything else: as filtered through movies, which is why we don't work for a golfing blog. And in the movies, there is no shortage of evidence that people can change resolve to change their lives. For the better? Eh, sometimes it depends on whether you're living the life or just sitting in the dark, watching it.

THE MOVIE: Taxi Driver (1976)

THE RESOLVER: Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro)

THE RESOLUTION: In his own words: "I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight." He also decides to try a new hairstyle.

THE RESULTS: Having turned himself into an urban guerrilla soldier in order to assassinate a presidential candidate, Travis, with a little help from the Secret Service, decides to redirect his energies towards persuading a child prostitute to return to her family in the Midwest after re-decorating the walls of a hotel room and corridor with her pimp's brains. After a period of rest and recovery in the hospital, he returns to work, where he finds that the girl who dumped him on their first date after a disagreement over his taste in movies is sufficiently impressed by the change in him to show up, hanging around his cab with a faraway look in her eyes. Clearly a success, made all the more gratifying by the fact that his hair grew out while he was in a coma and the girl never saw him in his ill-considered new look.

THE MOVIE: The Shining (1980)

THE RESOLVER: Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson)

THE RESOLUTION: To use the time and isolation provided by his new winter job to really sit down and focus on getting some serious writing done. Also, if the masterpiece gets finished early, maybe spend some time examining his relationship with his wife and son.

THE RESULTS: Torrence's breakthrough experimental novel, consisting of 38,000 typographical variations on the same ten-word sentence, didn't make Oprah's Book Club, but both Harold Bloom and David Eggers think it was underrated at the time of its original publication. (Back then, many critics questioned whether it would have been published at all if not for the surrounding news stories about Torrence's untimely death and the events surrounding the break-up of his marriage. Certainly the fact that his agent was able to arrange a six-figure movie deal came as a big surprise.) On the face of it, weighing the good against the no so good, this would appear to be a moderate success. However, thinking long term, it should be noted that the ending of The Shining seems to hint that Jack has been this way before, which in turn may indicate that he'll be back. And when he does, with all the life experience he'll be packing, the next book is sure to be dynamite!

THE MOVIE: Torremolinos 73 (2003)

THE RESOLVER: Alfredo López (Javier Cámara)

THE RESOLUTION: To make a better life for himself and his wife, Carmen (Candela Peña), by becoming a pornographic filmmaker.

This Spanish comedy, which is, or should be, dear to the hearts of all good Nerve readers, is a weirdly charming tribute to the homier side of the sexual revolution and the porno chic era. Alfredo and Carmen aren't the hardened pros of Boogie Nights but budding entrepreneurs trying to ride their mom and pop operation into a higher level of the middle class, and they have amusingly mixed feelings about the discovery that Carmen has become an international porn star. Alfredo, who can't compete with his wife for the camera's attention, tries to compensate by letting his artistic pretensions develop, and the two manage to go out in glory with the bigger-budgeted art-porn flick of the title, which also makes it possible for Carmen to conceive a child with one of her studly co-stars, a develop that delights both Carmen and her loving but infertile husband. By going all the way with his resolution, the lucky Alfredo is able to express himself artistically, enrich himself and his family financially, and strengthen his marriage. Somewhere, Jack Torrence is seething.

THE MOVIE: Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

THE RESOLVER: Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)

THE RESOLUTION: To end a long-standing and thoroughly enjoyed addiction to drugs, following an unfortunate incident involving a weekend in the woods spent burying a turquoise-faced Heather Graham.

THE RESULTS: Bob trades in a free-wheeling, exciting life as the unquestioned head of a "family" of doper-grifters and a marriage to one of the hottest women in the history of movies (Kelly Lynch) for a sorry, colorless nine-to-five existence and the random wild evening spent being lectured by William S. Burroughs. On the plus side, he is, at twenty-six, a healthy young man, freshly clean and sober, with his whole blooming life laid out ahead of him. On the down side, Max Perlich blows his brains out.

THE MOVIE: Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

THE RESOLVER: Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage)

THE RESOLUTION: To enjoy the exorbitant severance check that he has won as a result of his alcoholism by relocating to a city where the bars never close and drink himself to death

THE RESULTS: A spectacular success. Not only does Ben succeed in drinking himself to death, becoming so liquefied and benumbed that he is able to enjoy having broken glass embedded in every square inch of his naked back, but his glitteringly flamboyant self-destructiveness wins the heart of a fair hooker (Elisabeth Shue), one of those hard-edged but vulnerable blondes made all the more painfully alluring by the emotional and physical wear and tear of her unhappy experience. What's more, in his final scene, in a trope that would test H. P. Lovecraft's ability to suspend his disbelief, he was able to present her with a functioning erection, despite the fact that he was so drunk that his penis was the last remaining part of him that could still stand up. Though it will win us no awards from MADD for saying it, it must be admitted that Leaving Las Vegas makes a much stronger case for getting plowed than Drugstore Cowboy makes for cleaning up your act.

THE MOVIE: Lost in America (1985)

THE RESOLVER: David Howard (Albert Brooks)

THE RESOLUTION: To drop out of society, cash in their savings and the proceeds from the sale of their house to supply them with a $145,000 "nest egg", take to the road (with his wife, Linda, played by Julie Hagerty), and, in his own words: "Touch Indians, see the mountains and the prairies and all the rest of that song."

THE RESULTS: David starts out with a full head of steam but plows into a wall when he and the Missus stop in Vegas with plans to renew their marriage vows. Waking up to discover that Linda has hit the blackjack table and eaten into "the core of the nest egg"--and failing to persuade the casino boss (Garry Marshall) to give them back their money as a goodwill P.R. gesture--David flips out and becomes impossible to live with before settling down to try to start a new life in a trailer home, with Linda taking a job at a burger joint and David working as a crossing guard. After a day of this, he and Linda reconsider their devotion to their new identities as social dropouts and conclude that it would be better for David to return to the bosses he insulted and walked out on "and eat shit." On the most obvious level, it might seem that this resolution ended with a case of clear-cut, absolute failure. On the other hand, the simple fact of it is that most people are what they, deep down, prefer to be, and however much they might wish they were someone else, they don't change. Keeping that in mind, Lost in America can be seen as the story of someone who, in the course of about two weeks, gave it his best shot, found out that he wasn't cut out to be Walt Whitman--which means that he won't spend the rest of his life torturing himself with thoughts about the road not taken--and was able to return to his true path with a minimum of hurt and damage: no harm, no foul. Except that you have to wonder how David would feel right about now, given that he'd be about sixty, and would have spent the last several months watching his retirement fund turn to ash. If Brooks were up for a sequel, it might be scarier than whatever George Romero still has in him.

DVD Digest for December 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This week, the big studios drop a ton of new DVDs and Blu-Rays into the market to compete for your newly-acquired Christmas cash.

In recent releases, DVD shopping begins early this week, with three new Paramount titles: Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye (also Blu-Ray); Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town (also Blu-Ray); and Keira Knightley in The Duchess (also Blu-Ray). Today brings us Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha (Image Entertainment), as well as a “head to head” match up (sorry) between Alan Ball’s Towelhead (Warner) and the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead (Sony).

In TV on DVD, today’s new releases include The Tudors Season 2 (Paramount) and Nip/Tuck Season 5 Part 1 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s bumper crop of new Blu-Ray-only releases includes: Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Paramount); the Shining-in-space thriller Event Horizon (Paramount); Demi Moore and the Swayz in Ghost (Paramount); Queen Latifah in Last Holiday (Paramount); Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount); Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (Warner); and finally, the Browncoats’ favorite, Joss Whedon’s Serenity (Universal).

Trailer Review: 2012 (Teaser)

Paul Clark — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Say what you will about his movies, but Roland Emmerich’s work has always made for awesome teasers. Remember the image of the White House getting zapped in Independence Day, the museum bit in the Godzilla teaser, or the frozen-over New York skyline of Day After Tomorrow? Quite frankly, I thought this teaser for Emmerich’s latest disaster epic 2012 was his best yet. Of course, much of this has to do with it being a cheeky homage to one of Screengrab’s all-time favorites, the classic teaser for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. I knew I was in for a treat when I heard Wendy Carlos’ music from the teaser, accompanying the giant wave that crashes over the mountains (!). But when the monastery floats away just like the couch in the Shining teaser, I had to chuckle- I was the only one in the theatre doing so, but what the hell. Had I contributed to this week's list, I would have declared Emmerich’s disaster movies to be some of my guilty pleasures, and I’m primed for 2012 to be one as well.

Screengrab Presents: The 25 Greatest Horror Films of All Time (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

5. DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)

Fuck a Zack Snyder remake – no other zombie movie, not even by George Romero, will ever surpass the original Dawn of the Dead. How do I love this gory, nasty, and surprisingly moving masterpiece of terror? Let me count the ways. First of all, while it can’t surpass the closed-up creepiness of the original Night of the Living Dead, it opens it up to staggering effect and makes it a truly apocalyptic horror film. Second, Night had always been projected as a one-off; it was Dawn that made zombies into one of the famous monsters of filmdom, that transformed Romero’s dead-eyed flesh-eaters into beings with their own mythology and internal logic. By doing so, it didn’t just launch a franchise – it launched an entire universe, a cultural archetype with as much meaning and possibility as vampires, werewolves – or angels. Third, it’s tight as hell, incredibly suspenseful, and remarkably well-acted, with the technical difficulties of filming something so ambitious on a shoestring overcome in surprising and effective ways. Fourth, like all great horror movies, it gives us an essential human drama at its center; we care about the story because we care about Stephen, Peter, Roger and Francine. Fifth, it’s a deeply satirical exercise, the first attempt – and probably the most successful – by Romero to mock us by showing us the way a lot of people probably see us: zombies as cultural/political metaphors. And sixth…well, it’s about a bunch of flesh-eating zombies running amok in a shopping mall. And, to use the highfalutin language of film criticism, that’s awesome.

4. PSYCHO (1960)

One of the running jokes around the opulent Screengrab offices is that no matter what lists we come up with, there’s some way to fit Psycho onto them. I’ve personally written up so many aspects of it, I feel like I should get a screenplay credit. But Psycho is definitely responsible for two major accomplishments – both, to me, indisputable, and both decidedly mixed blessings to cinema – that make it especially suitable for this list. The first is that it effectively killed off noir. The highly stylized crime dramas were already on their way out, but Psycho, by cribbing so many of their visual cues but utterly annihilating (literally, at least in the case of Marion Crane) their doomed criminal anti-heroes and shifting the focus from ordinary criminals to extraordinary psychopaths, Psycho put noir in the ground as a dominant method of storytelling. The second is that it ushered in a new kind of villain: setting the tone for the slasher movies of 20 years later and the torture porn of 40 years later, Psycho replaced the notion of the murderer as a relatable character – a villain, surely, but one driven by rational urges like greed, lust, revenge, or envy – with that of the psychopath. Gone was the moral ambiguity of crime dramas past, and in its place was the appeal of the villain who was totally alien: who was intriguing because we could not recognize ourselves in him, because he did things we literally could not imagine. There’s no denying that these two transformations did more harm than good, and ushered in legions of terrible movies, but they’re also further testimonies to how great, and how transformative, Psycho really was.

3. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

George A. Romero has directed a number of great films, but his legacy will surely be his contributions to the zombie horror subgenre. With five Dead films under his belt and yet another on the way, Romero has defined the modern concept of big-screen zombies. Many consider his masterpiece to be 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, with its scathing critique of our consumerist impulses, but for sheer thrills, nothing can top the original Night of the Living Dead. The plot is simple, almost crude -- a group of strangers barricade themselves in an abandoned home in order to defend themselves against an infestation of zombies roaming the countryside. But working from this rudimentary premise, Romero fashioned a scruffier, scarier counterpart to Hitchcock’s The Birds, another film that mined horror from a sudden, uncanny plague unleashed by nature. In addition, Romero’s hardscrabble shooting style -- his black and white 16mm cinematography was necessitated by the film’s $100,000 budget -- helped to change the way horror movies could be made. With the runaway success of Night, horror began to move away from the elegant, big-budget productions to more quick-and-dirty scares, paving the way for the likes of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, and many others. But none of this would matter if Night wasn’t scary as hell, which it definitely is, in large part because Romero so skillfully orchestrates the breakdown of society that results from the zombie plague. With the line between living and dead so thoroughly obliterated, nothing else can be sacred -- government, law, morality, and perhaps most memorably, the institution of the family. When a couple’s infected daughter suddenly turns on her parents, it’s clear that anything is possible in Romero’s world, which is perhaps the scariest notion of all.

2. FREAKS (1932)

Having launched a legend the year before with the Bela Lugosi talkie of Dracula, old Hollywood hand Tod Browning decided to quit fucking around: this time, he was serious. This time, the horror felt by his audience wasn’t going to be creepy or sensual: it was going to be repulsive and visceral. And he was going to make them pay for it. The essence of some of the greatest horror stories is making the audience question who, exactly, the monsters really are, and, by peopling its cast with authentic touring circus freaks and then making them the victims of the greedy, lying “normals”, Freaks made it crystal clear: they are us. Some have accused the film of exploiting its cast, but that’s a knee-jerk reaction that not only ignores the movie’s moral complexity (and the fact that the wronged freaks exact a chilling, and utterly deserved, vengeance on their tormentors), but also the fact that for many of the performers, it was the biggest paycheck they’d ever have. They were also treated well by Browning and his cast, something that couldn’t be said for the studio (which wouldn’t allow most of them to dine in the cafeteria) or many of its stars (who refused to star alongside “sideshow exhibitions”). The knowledge of how the picture was made only serves to enhance its powerful condemnation of intolerance -- which was even stronger, just as the ending was even bleaker, before the studio forced cuts. Even today, over 75 years later, Freaks remains one of the most disturbing films ever released by a major Hollywood studio – just as Tod Browning had intended.

1. THE SHINING (1980)

One of the big mistakes many horror filmmakers make is to over-explain the mysterious forces at work in their films. Ask anyone who’s watched the misguided “explanation scene” that George Romero belatedly added to some of the DVD releases of Night of the Living Dead -- usually, not knowing exactly why the monsters are attacking is much more effective than knowing. No horror movie has captured this idea better than The Shining. Stanley Kubrick memorably stated of 2001 that he “wanted to ask more questions than we had answers,” and he used the same tactic in bringing Stephen King’s bestseller to the screen. Naturally, this annoyed many viewers, including King himself, who didn’t cotton to the liberties Kubrick took with his work. But no matter -- it’s the film’s ambiguity that makes it so disturbing. Why are there two different Gradys? What’s up with the guy in the animal suit? And what exactly happens to Jack at the end of the movie? Wisely, Kubrick withholds the answers, allowing the disorientation that results from these scenes to go unresolved. In addition, the film also tells a more human-sized horror story, of a family that’s barely holding together even before the ghosts arrive on the scene -- a man whose eerie formality keeps his demons uneasily at bay as long as he stays off the sauce, a boy overwhelmed by his supernatural gift (curse?) and still scarred by an act of drunken violence by his father, and the woman who can’t handle the idea of losing either of them. All the while, Kubrick practically hypnotizes us with his filmmaking brilliance -- those Steadicam shots! -- meaning that even when The Shining becomes difficult to watch, it’s impossible to look away.

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

Contributors: Jack-o-Leonard Pierce, Mauled Clark

The Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon (Part Three)

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Introduction

Part One

Part Two

Noon – 2 p.m. THE DARK HALF (1993)

I think we can all agree that writing has been very good to Stephen King, and it certainly seems to be something he enjoys doing for a living, given the fact that he still puts out approximately seventeen books a month. Yet a casual glance at the writer characters in his work reveals a certain, I dunno, ambiguity about the matter. There’s Jack Torrance, the frustrated novelist of The Shining, who tries to bludgeon his family to death. Paul Sheldon of Misery attempts to retire his most famous character and ends up the prisoner of an obsessed fan. And in George Romero’s adaptation of The Dark Half, we have Timothy Hutton as Thad Beaumont, an author of serious but poorly-selling literary fiction who achieves success with dark, violent novels published under the name George Stark. When a blackmailer threatens to out Beaumont to the press, the author takes matters into his own hands, confessing his Stark-ness and staging a mock funeral for his alter ego. The matter seems resolved until George Stark comes to life and goes on a killing spree, for which Beaumont is the prime suspect. Romero’s film is one of the better received King adaptations, and Hutton does a respectable job in the dual role of weenie Thad and badass Stark (even if he can’t pronounce “Bangor” – it’s not “banger,” people!), but a more accurate title would have been Half-Baked. Romero doesn’t bother trying to wring much suspense out of whether Thad is actually doing Stark’s killing himself, and like much of King’s latter-day work, the whole thing degenerates into arbitrary hocus-pocus in lieu of a psychologically satisfying ending.

Odd (but not really that odd) fact: Michael Rooker plays Castle Rock sheriff Alan Pangborn, who is played by Ed Harris in Needful Things. Ed Harris is married to Amy Madigan, who plays Thad Beaumont’s wife Liz in The Dark Half. This must mean SOMETHING.

2 p.m. – 4 p.m. THINNER (1996)

Of course Stephen King had his own George Stark, although as far as we known the pseudonym Richard Bachman never came to life and started murdering people. King published five novels under Bachman’s name before being outed as the real author shortly after the publication of Thinner. In King’s case, however, it’s not like he was doing something completely different as Bachman; Thinner, in particular, is vintage King. It’s also a prime example of a story that works on the page, but not so much on film. Whilst driving and simultaneously receiving a blowjob from his wife, fat mob lawyer Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke) accidentally hits and kills an old gypsy woman. The gypsy’s even more ancient father puts a curse on Billy, who begins to lose weight at a rapid clip. This is great at first, especially since he can eat whatever he wants, but it soon becomes clear that the weight loss won’t end until there’s nothing left of him. With the help of a mobster client (Joe Mantegna), an emaciated Billy tries to get the gypsies to reverse the curse. Unfortunately, the fat suit technology is not sufficiently advanced to be anything other than a distraction; Mike Myers was more convincing as Fat Bastard. The “thinner” prosthetics are even worse, but I suppose it’s too much to ask for Burke to go on Christian Bale’s Machinist diet for a B-movie like this. There’s a nasty little twist ending (hint: it involves pie!), but again, it worked better on the page.

King’s cameo: He’s the pharmacist Mr. Bangor (not banger!)

4 p.m. – 6 p.m. THE NIGHT FLIER (1997)

One of the lesser known – perhaps even the least known – King adaptations, Night Flier is based on a short story from the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection. Miguel Ferrer is his usual acerbic self as sarcastic, ill-tempered tabloid Richard Dees, a reporter for the Weekly World News-esque Inside View. Dees and a rival cub reporter (Julie Entwisle) are investigating a series of murders at small airports. It seems “the Night Flier” swoops in at night in his black Cessna, emerges in a black-and-red Dracula cloak, and eviscerates the unlucky inhabitants. It’s a pretty flimsy premise for a feature-length film, and not much happens until the last fifteen minutes or so, when Dees finally catches up to the Night Flier in an airport full of slaughtered victims. There’s an eerie bathroom moment I’ve never seen before: a stream of blood emerging from an invisible wee-wee and splashing into a urinal. Hey, it creeped me out. As so often happens, however, the ultimate revelation of the baddie is a letdown – just another big critter carved out of latex.

King’s cameo: He doesn’t appear in person, but there’s a clever moment when the camera pans across a wall of framed Inside View covers, each of which takes its headline from a different King story.

The Final Chapter

The Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon (Part Two)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Introduction

Part One

6 a.m. – 8 a.m. CHILDREN OF THE CORN (1984)

Some would say I’m crazy for undertaking this 24-hour marathon, but I do have my limits. For example, I had briefly considered doing a marathon of every Children of the Corn movie instead. As you may or may not know, there are seven total Corn movies, of which the final five were released straight to video. I find this odd for many reasons, not least of which is that corn isn’t generally considered to be scary. (Creamed corn, on the other hand…terrifying.) Fortunately I came to my senses, so you’ll only find this one Children of the Corn here. Based on another Night Shift short story, the film begins with a tried-and-true King set-up, as bickering couple Burt (Peter Horton) and Vicky (Linda Hamilton) drive across country via some scenic back roads. While passing through Nebraska (hey, it’s not like Children of the Corn was going to take place in New Jersey), they hit a young boy with their car. But it turns out the kid was already dead, a sacrifice by the children of Gatlin to He Who Walks Behind the Rows. These brats have already killed off all the adults in town under the leadership of Isaac, another one of King’s patented Creepy Kids. Can Burt and Vicky escape Gatlin without being sacrificed to the corn demon? I’ll be honest, I think I nodded off for a few minutes near the end of this one. I do have a vague memory of Linda Hamilton tied to a cornstalk crucifix, but that’s about it.

King’s cameo: He doesn’t appear in person, but there’s a paperback copy of Night Shift on Burt’s dashboard.

8 a.m. – 10 a.m. DESPERATION (2006)

Am I still watching Children of the Corn? For a minute there, I thought I was looking at Peter Horton driving through the middle of nowhere again, but it turned out to be Steven Weber. Weber, of course, starred as Jack Torrance in the “Why would you do this?” TV miniseries of The Shining. That misbegotten enterprise, as well as the epic TV version of The Stand and many other King things, was directed by Mick Garris, who must have photos of the author with an underage goat. Garris also directed Desperation for TV, but managed to confine this one to a single night. We’ve got another town at the ass-end of nowhere – in this case, Desperation, Nevada – where all the inhabitants are dead. Everyone who happens to be passing through gets pulled over by Sheriff Collie Entragian (Ron Perlman), who finds some pretext to arrest them, lock them up, and, at his leisure, kill them. This is because Entragian is possessed by a demon unearthed from the local strip-mine. One of his detainees is another Creepy Kid, David, who has suddenly gotten religion after being locked in a jail cell by a scary sheriff possessed by a demon. It’s as good a time as any, I suppose. The theology of Desperation is a little murky, but the movie did give me some insight into King’s creative process. I imagine it goes a little like this: King is pulled over for speeding in some shitty little town. Surly cop gives him a ticket. King thinks, “You know what would make this suck even harder? If this cop was possessed by a demon!” Presto, another 600-page novel is born. This ESPN spot would appear to back up my theory:

10 a.m. – Noon SLEEPWALKERS (1992)

Hey, it’s Mick Garris again! And Ron Perlman as another surly lawman, although this one doesn’t appear to be possessed. He does get his arm ripped off, though. Sleepwalkers is actually Garris’s first collaboration with Stephen King, based on the author’s first original screenplay (that is, not adapted from a previously extant novel or short story). Madchen Amick, the most underrated of the Twin Peaks girls, falls for the new boy in town, handsome, vapid Charles Brady (Brian Krause). Little does she know Charles has an incestuous relationship with his hot mom Mary (Alice Krige). But that’s not all! Charles and Mary are both shape-shifting cat people who feed on virgins – possibly the last of their race. Oddly enough, the only thing that can stop them is an attack by an actual cat. It’s a dilemma for poor Charlie; he kinda likes Madchen Amick, but he kinda has to feed her to his hot mom. High school is hard! In the movie’s highlight, Mary kills a cop by impaling him with an ear of corn. OK, so I was wrong. Corn is scary.

King’s cameo: He’s the cemetery caretaker who doesn’t want to be blamed for the mutilated corpses found there.

Part Three

Introducing the Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:30:00 GMT

As a special Halloween treat for Screengrab readers, I will be prying my eyelids open Clockwork Orange-style for a 24-hour marathon of movies based on the works of Stephen King. Because I have not completely lost my mind, these 24 hours will not necessarily be consecutive. I’ll be stringing them out all week, with each entry covering roughly six hours worth of possessed cars, killer dogs and corn-worshipping children. (However, once I’ve completed the task and reported my findings here, feel free to conduct your own 24-hour-straight experiment. I did this once before for my book Hick Flicks, watching 24 consecutive hours of hillbilly horror movies – including all four chapters of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre saga then in existence. About 18 hours into it, my dog was begging for mercy and I had to switch to the Golf Channel for a few minutes to decompress.)

I’ve set a few ground rules for this descent into the depths of cinematic terror. First of all, the roster must include only horror movies. No prison flicks or coming-of-age stories or whatever the hell Hearts in Atlantis is. This is a Halloween special, after all, so I need giant rats and werewolves and shit like that. Secondly, I eliminated any movie I’m very familiar with – The Shining, Carrie and Stand by Me, to cite the most obvious examples – as well as anything I’d seen in the past decade or so. That includes recent fare like The Mist, 1408 and Dreamcatcher, as well as the movies I watched for this High Hat piece on the state of Maine as depicted in King’s works. I didn’t want to be able to cheat and go by memory – although it’s not like any of you would really know if I did, anyway. Still, the integrity of the process must not be compromised, and since there are so many King movies out there, it wasn’t hard to limit myself to stuff I’ve either never seen or saw so long ago, I barely remember.

With all that being said, tune in tomorrow for Part One of the Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon!

A Screengrab Salute To Movie Trailers: Addendum!

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Oh, my goodness. After recently saluting some of the best previews for Hollywood, independent, grade-Z schlock and even fake movies, it suddenly occurred to me that we here at the Screengrab forgot a very important category: PARODY trailers.

True, there aren't that many, but at least ONE must certainly be recognized as part of any decent salute to coming attractions.

Many of you will have seen this already (and the accompanying picture should hip you to the parody trailer of which I speak)...but it's always worth seeing again, yes?

And if you DON'T know what I'm talking about, by all means, click below and enjoy!

Coming Soon: A Screengrab Salute To Movie Trailers (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The fake trailers from TROPIC THUNDER (2008), GRINDHOUSE (2007) & KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977)

Of course, no tribute to the art of coming attraction trailers would be complete without a nod to the art of FAKE coming attraction trailers. Tropic Thunder recently delighted many and outraged some with its fake preview for Simple Jack, a dead-on parody of the odious, manipulative genre of faux-inspirational retar...I mean, “mentally challenged”-sploitation potboilers like I Am Sam. And last year, the interstitial glimpses of fictional schlock classics like Machete, Thanksgiving, Werewolf Women of the SS and Don’t (by Robert Rodriguez and cameo directors Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright, respectively) were the best reasons to sit through the entire 191-minute cut of Grindhouse in one sitting. But perhaps the granddaddy (or granddaughter?) of all fake trailers is the "teaser" for Catholic High School Girls In Trouble, one of the definite hits in John Landis’ hit-or-miss cult classic, Kentucky Fried Movie (but, uh, you might not wanna watch this one at work).

The trailer for BUFFALO ’66 (1998)

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to agree that Vincent Gallo doesn’t make ordinary movies. Gallo’s taste for the strange extended to his trailer for his first directorial effort, Buffalo ’66. Cut by Gallo himself, the trailer is a montage of still images from the film, set to the opening passages of Yes’ “Heart of the Sunrise.” As a montage it’s pretty irresistible, with the percussive cutting matching the rhythm of the song, down to the way Gallo animates the stills of Anjelica Huston gesticulating at the dinner table. But what makes this trailer even cooler is that it’s one of the few that show more or less everything in the movie without giving it away. We see the characters, the style, the grey and dingy setting, but we’re wondering how it all fits together. And thanks to how well Gallo sells it, we can’t wait to find out.

The trailer for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

The Python boys never met a phenomenon they couldn’t satirize, so it was only natural that with the trailer for their first feature, they’d hold the art of movie advertising up to scorn. This epic three-minute spot begins with a panoramic shot that’s meant to underline the majesty of the film that’s ostensibly being advertised, accompanied by properly stentorian narration. Naturally, the boys soon pull the rug out from under this seriousness, revealing it to be merely auditions for a voiceover artist. Eventually, we end up with narration in subtitled Chinese (this at a time when studios were avoiding non-English dialogue in trailers), after which the trailer goes to work on the self-important rhetoric of studio marketing. The narrator calls the movie “run-of-the-mill” and says, “compared to something like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, it’s all rather silly.” In addition, the editing of the trailer is reminiscent of the work of fly-by-night distributors who more or less assembled highlights from the film with little regard for coherence. But here, that’s all part of the magic, although it may be difficult to notice while you’re laughing at the trailer’s version of a rave review or the abrupt segue to an advertisement for a nearby Chinese restaurant. So few classic movies have the trailers they deserve, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail definitely does.

The trailer for COMEDIAN (2002)

When it was announced that Don “The Voice” LaFontaine had passed away, many movie lovers flashed back to this trailer, only to discover that its featured talent wasn’t LaFontaine at all, but fellow voiceover titan Hal Douglas. No matter: we’d like to think that LaFontaine would have approved of this “anti-trailer”, still the most succinct and priceless distillation of the deathless voiceover clichés that he spouted so many times over the years. But while on the surface this teaser has nothing but contempt for the inane catchphrases that get recycled by the studios, there’s also a real affection for the men whose job it is to give them authority. By giving a face to the usually faceless voiceover artist, we gain respect for him, and for the way he forges on even when he realizes that the things he’s made to say are completely absurd. As much as lines like “in a world…” have become a joke to trailer watchers, they’re also a kind of comfort, and when Douglas responds to his being fired with, “No, I like it in here,” we can’t help but think that, yes, we like you in there too.

The trailer for SLEEPER (1973)

This trailer for Woody Allen's futuristic "love story about two people who hate each other" parodies the convention by which the great filmmaker is caught by the camera crew and an unseen interviewer while busily working on his next masterpiece. The trailer itself benefits from clips drawn from one of Allen's few films to include both vivid cartoon imagery and an elegant production design. And the scenes in which Allen promises a movie "with very little overt comedy" and scenes "of a cerebral, almost didactic nature" look even funnier now, considering that they could pass as an accurate description of any of a dozen stink bombs he's made since this slapstick classic came out.

The trailer for ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

Instead of emphasizing popular stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, early promotions for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind featured supporting player Tom Wilkinson – if you knew to look for him. This teaser trailer mimicks the low-budget aesthetic of commercials for the local dentist’s office, but the service they’re offering – a selective memory erasure – is purely the stuff of Charlie Kaufman’s imagination. The poker-faced buzz campaign for Eternal Sunshine was entirely based around Lacuna, Inc., including a website with coupons.

The trailer for LITTLE CHILDREN (2006)

You can keep your big explosions and breathtaking panoramas. This trailer for Todd Field’s Little Children holds everything in, and the mounting tension – symbolized by a child’s toy train chugging through a dozen ordinary suburban moments – is almost unbearable.

The trailer for THE SHINING (1980)

Often the most memorable and effective trailers aren't those that sweat to cram in the movie's every high point and plot point but those that boil a picture down to an especially striking image and sell it in a way that sutures it to the viewer's imagination. Stanley Kubrick provided an especially choice example with this early and mysterious look at his 1980 horror movie. It consists of a single shot that turned up late in the film, tricked up here with electronic music and mechanical-sounding voices chanting "Redrum." (Did Kubrick bring in HAL 9000 to work on the soundtrack?) It appeared several months before the movie itself was released, and played briefly before being pulled in favor of a more conventional and far less disturbing trailer.

Click Here for Part One!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Gwynne Watkins

Boxes of Kubrick

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

A few weeks ago our birthday boy Leonard Pierce told you about a special program of Stanley Kubrick films running on England’s Channel 4 and gave you a look at this Shining-styled promo for the series. As it happens, that’s not the only new content developed for the series. There is a also an hour-long documentary called True Stories: Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, in which Jon Ronson (author of Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats) digs through the Kubrick archives in hopes of gaining some insight into the most mystery-shrouded of filmmakers, as well as a series of 3-minute shorts dubbed “Stanley Kubrick’s Small Boxes.” And we’ve got them all for you after the jump:

Think Kubrick is a montage of fans recounting their memories of the man’s work:

Call Sheet reconstructs a production meeting based on a call sheet from Dr. Strangelove:

SKA-63 is an animated collage of indelible images from the Kubrick collection:

Overlook is a creepy trip through the haunted hotel from The Shining:

And here’s the full-length Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes documentary:

Related:
The Kubrick Rarities
Kubrick's Marketing Man Speaks

Take Five: Psychics

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:15:00 GMT

Death Defying Acts opens in limited release this weekend, and so far, it hasn't generated much advance buzz. It's hard to figure out why: It comes on the heels of other successful movies involving magicians, including The Prestige and The Illusionist; it's a romance-driven period piece (which should attract women), but it features a murder mystery, psychics, and famed escape artist Harry Houdini (for the fellas); it's got an all-star cast led by perennial heartthrobs Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones; and it's directed by none other than girl-geek icon Gillian Anderson. Maybe people are confused by the premise: in Death Defying Acts features Zeta-Jones as a spiritualist out to run a con on the master magician. We haven't seen it yet, so we're not sure if Zeta-Jones' powers are portrayed as being authentic, but in real life, Houdini was a relentless skeptic who didn't believe in any aspect of the paranormal, and who, in fact, went out of his way to disprove all claims of the supernatural as buncombe. Regardless, Hollywood has always been a sucker for a good psychic yarn, which probably explains why goofy New Age religions tend to take root in southern California before hitting the rest of the country. For today's Take Five, we bring you a handful of fine films about psychics -- and not a single one starring Shirley MacLaine.

THE SHINING (1980)

Nobody does psychic powers like Stephen King, and nobody realizes those psychic powers on screen better than Stanley Kubrick does in this horror classic. One of the most effective ideas Kubrick had was to de-emphasize Danny's psychic abilities, to tone down the paranormal aspects of the story (such as the hedge topiary coming to life) in order to play up the much more compelling dramatic element of a family in isolation slowly falling apart. Not that the terrifying paranormal elements aren't there: few moments in contemporary horror are creepier than seeing Danny go into a drooling fit, or the bizarre images he sees in the abandoned rooms of the Outlook Hotel -- but by keeping them ambiguous, by allowing the suggestion that none of it is real, that it's all just possibly the byproduct of an epileptic vision or a mind damaged by loneliness and alcohol -- the whole thing is made more compelling and upsetting than if the paranormal elements were made explicit.

SCANNERS (1981)

There's nothing subtle or ambiguous, on the other hand, about David Cronenberg's early sci-fi terror masterpiece. Before his transition to an artist of the decay and dysfunction of the body in modern classics like The Fly, Cronenberg's obsession was the abuse and alteration of the mind -- and as he showed in movies like Altered States, The Brood and Videodrome, an unhinged mind could do a vast amount of damage. Nowhere is this given a sharper point than in his cult classic Scanners, which works pretty much like HIghlander except with exploding heads instead of sword decapitations. As shadowy corporations struggle to control the massive psionic powers of a handful of people, we witness the battle firsthand through the activities of a highly game cast which includes mopey Stephen Lack, sinister Michael Ironside, and hammy Patrick McGoohan. Scanners also features one of our favorite taglines ever: "There are four billion people on Earth. 237 are scanners. And they are winning." Choice!

THE FURY (1978)

After having wet his beak in the unhinged-psychic game with a now-legendary film adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie (see, there's king again), Brian De Palma warmed to the subject and cranked out a modest but highly energetic (and entertaining) teen-psychics-in-trouble picture called The Fury. Featuring Amy Irving and Andrew Stevens as the two fresh-faced kids who have to worry about blowing up a city block instead of needing to pick up some Clearasil, the plot revolves around their being sent to a government research lab where their overseers must walk a thin line between making sure their prize specimens don't get away and make them happy enough that they don't turn their considerable powers on their masters. Playing almost like a trial run of some of David Cronenberg's laer stuff, The Fury is bounding with energy (and not just of the psychic variety), and its B-movie plot is highly abetted by the top-notch cast, including a wildly overaheated Kirk Douglas as Stevens' father and a gravely understated John Cassavetes as one of the government flunkies.

AKIRA (1988)

As any teenager -- including the ones on this list -- can tell you, being young is no picnic. Your body starts to change, girls don't like you and you can't figure out why, you start feeling sick and alienated for no reason, and before you know it, you're hanging out with a bunch of nogoodniks in a biker gang. But if you start to develop horrific psychic powers, ones that can kill your friends, turn you into a grotesque monster, and even level the entire city of Toyko with the power of a nuclear bomb? Well, that, brother, as a very wise man once said, is when your heartaches really begin. Katsuhiro Otomo's groundbreaking animated feature, based on his own graphic novel series, featured stellar animation, top-shelf voice acting, creepy effects, a complex but not incomprehensible storyline (it turns out, to no one's real surprise, that a nefarious military intelligence project is behind poor Akira's transformation into a psionic monstrosity), and some great effects at the movie's unforgettable end all helped open up western markets to both anime and manga, transforming the world of comics and film forever.

INVINCIBLE (2001)

Anyone can make a movie about deranged psychics who threaten the lives of their loved ones. Leave it to Werner Herzog to up the ante by making a movie about a deranged psychic in the employ of the Nazi party who enlists a Jewish strongman to help him put on a carnival show about Siegfried, the legendary Aryan hero of myth. It's this kind of intensely focussed eccentricity, and reckless disregard for making sense, that seperates the men like Herzog from the boys. This was Herzog's first narrative feature after a prolonged stretch of making documentaries, and while it's not nearly in the same league as movies like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God, it's still got his knack for breathtaking imagery and his gift for illustrating the mad inner lives of obsessives in spades. The psychic in question in Invincible is Erik Jan Hanussen, the doomed faux-Dane who, for a while, operated as Hitler's personal clairvoyant until falling out of favor with Der Fuhrer's inner circle and getting himself assassinated. His story is also told in the relatively straightforward biopic Hanussen (1988), but that movie can't compete with Tim Roth's giddy performance or Herzog's fiery direction.

Video of the Day: "The Shining", Channel Four Style

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:30:00 GMT

This month is Kubrick Month on the UK's Channel Four, and in honor of the late director (who did much of his best work in England), their advertising department has created a rather impressive way to introduce viewers to him: by literally putting them in the director's chair.

Channel Four took great pains to recreate the backstage feel of The Shining: aside from the near-perfect duplication of the Outlook Hotel, the network hired actors who highly resemble Kubrick's 1980 cast and crew, produced mock-ups of the props and equipment, and chose to do the promo as a continuous tracking shot in duplication of some of the movie's most memorable scenes.

In Other Blogs: Critical Condition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As regular readers of this column know, we like to single out blog posts that bring a fresh perspective to these pictures we call motion; finely crafted, passionate posts that allow us all to see cinema through new eyes. But more than that, we love a good pissing contest.

This latest one began with another lamentation over the position of the modern film critic – otherwise known as the unemployment line. A piece called “Where Have All the Film Critics Gone?” from The Brooklyn Rail quoted several notable film bloggists, like Matt Zoller Seitz who said, “I think we’re fast approaching the point where criticism will become, for the most part, a devotion rather than a job.” And then there was Michael Atkinson, who wrote on his Zero For Conduct blog: ““[T]he existence of full-time staff film reviewers is a nutty aberration in the history of periodical publishing…I’d love to see every magazine employ an army of full-time culture reviewers, and pay them millions, but it doesn’t make very much sense, for the simple reason that it’s not truly a full-time job.”

That didn’t sit well with Glenn Kenny, who recently lost his own full-time job with Premiere. At his “own bought-and-paid-for-blog, thank you very g-ddamn much,” Some Came Running, Kenny responds, “Gee, thanks, Michael. Whether you know it or not—and I rather suspect you do—you've just given a long belt of ammunition to the Sam Zells of the world. The gutters, the "cost-cutters," the content-haters, the obscenely rich resenters who think this whole "journalism" thing is a racket enacted by a bunch of smarty-pants elitist slackers. Way to be, pal. And while we're at it, define ‘full time.’ ‘I've done the job. I know how much time it takes,’ you puff to Rossmeir. (And um, just when did you turn into John fucking Milius, anyway?) What was it Red Smith said? ‘Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.’ I know, Michael, I know—Red Smith was probably some kind of pussy…You told Rossmeir that you didn't think critics who only work 10 to 12 hours a week should be paid like other professionals who work 40. Well, you know, that's why there's freelance journalism, which pays by the word, or by the piece. Generally speaking, if you're a staff member at a magazine, the amount of time you spend at your job is compounded merely by the fact that you're a staff member. NYT critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis aren't woolgathering when they're not writing reviews. Frequently, they're writing other pieces, for Arts and Leisure or for the magazine. Scott does video reviews. Both do on-line stuff. And both partake in the culture of being a staff member, that is, they go to meetings and such.” I’ve been a freelance movie reviewer for years, and used to yearn for a staff job, but – they go to meetings? Forget it!

At Scanners, Jim Emerson weighs in on the kerfuffle. (Yes, I’m officially dubbing it a kerfuffle.) “I've never had to support myself by working at a weekly or a monthly, and I don't know what Atkinson's situation was at the Voice, but if all he had to do as a staff critic was see ‘three or four movies a week’ and then knock out ‘1,000 or 1,500 words’ (apiece? altogether?) -- and he could live on the money he made from doing that -- then, wow, that's a really sweet gig and I don't blame him for feeling that he was running a scam. Somebody was. Because, in my experience, those numbers don't come close to adding up. Three or four movies a week wouldn't even cover major-studio wide releases. Who covers the rest (four? eight? a dozen?) for the week, the ‘art house,’ revival house, museum and nonprofit venue pictures that rely on reviews to find an audience? And since when do writers of any kind get paid by the hour? You're cashing checks just for the time you spend actually sitting at a keyboard, but for all the things you have to do in order to enable you to write. So a salary for a writer, reporter and/or film critic (and all three job descriptions fit the ‘critic’ designation) isn't exactly an hourly job, nor is it the equivalent of tenure. It's more like a retainer, for your work and what goes into producing it, but also for your availability. What's actually published is just the tail end of a much larger and longer process.”

David Poland at The Hot Button gets in on the action. “Yes, writers are valued in a different way than the people who print the papers, sell the papers, and even, to some degree, edit the papers. The work of a daily Metro writer or a daily political writer is something else. A daily byline is a special kind of grind that is more like a traditional job. But that’s not the part I have a problem with. What Atkinson misunderstands – and by dint of his own exit from the print work, understandably as an ego protection – is that ‘writers' availability and flow of copy’ is every bit as valued today as it ever was. What is quite different is that publishers expect to see some cause and effect from those they keep on board. If you are a film critic or highly paid entertainment journalist at a print outlet, you better have a following that cares about what you say – which doesn’t necessarily translate to ticket sales – or you are dead.”

Okay, enough about that. Let’s wrap it up with List-o-Mania, circling back to Glenn Kenny’s former place of employment, Premiere, for a special Father’s Day feature: The 10 Maddest, Baddest Daddies in Film. We’d never quibble with the inclusion of Jack Torrance from The Shining or Terry O’Quinn’s Stepfather, but whither Christopher Walken from At Close Range?

Screengrab Pub Crawl: The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Back in my misspent Hollywood days, my friends and I used to enjoy the occasional round of “bar golf” through the dives and strip clubs of Hollywood Boulevard. The rules were simple: a “par one” bar meant we’d have one drink and move on, “par two” meant two drinks, etc., and the goal was to drink in at least nine separate bars by the end of the night. We’d usually “tee off” in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, followed by pitchers of cheap beer in the “par two” Power House on Highland, and somehow the night always seemed to wind up with fire-breathing transvestite strippers at Jumbo’s Clown Room.

And so now, in honor of the recent Memorial Day kickoff to the official Summer Drinking Season, we here at The Screengrab invite you to join us on another pub crawl, though the Top 15 watering holes of cinema...so brace yourself with a nice starchy meal, grab your smokes and aspirin, and join us as we tee off at our first bar of the evening...

THE DRESDEN ROOM, SWINGERS (1996)

Unlike most of the bars on this list, The Dresden Room actually exists in the real world (1760 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Feliz, CA), as well as the fictional universe of Jon Favreau’s neo-rat pack classic Swingers. Maybe it was just the booze talking, but whenever my friends and I would hit the swanky-tacky Dresden on the Back Nine of an East Hollywood bar golf jaunt, we’d all feel as “money” as Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston and the rest of the film’s hepcat posse of unemployed actors, even though I’m pretty sure we never (A) dressed as well, (B) Lindy-Hopped as well or (C) scored digits from (or even met) any super-friendly, super-nice, conveniently single ladies with the suspiciously low standards and drop-dead movie star looks of Heather Graham’s swing-dance enthusiast, Lorraine (who, in L.A., at least, is a mythological figure on par with Liv Tyler’s elf princess in The Lord of the Rings). We did, however, spend plenty of nights enjoying the peculiar jazz stylings of Dresden’s house band staples, Marty & Elayne, who also straddle the line between reality and fiction...much like our drinking buddy a little further down the street in...

THE SKID ROW DIVE BARS OF BARFLY (1987)

To all my freeeeenz! The late Charles Bukowki, the poet laureate of the Thunderbird wine company, wrote this semi-autobiographical fantasy after he himself had stopped going to bars, and he must have wanted to get both his dream image of himself -- the great wino writer Henry Chinaski, played by Mickey Rourke -- and his idea of the bar of his dreams on film to warm himself in his dried-out dotage. The bar in question is a magical place where the women all look like hookers played by Sylvia Miles and the men stand around gawking in awe as our boy Henry shows off his verbal gifts by giving the bartender-bouncer (Frank Stallone) such tips as, "Your mother's cunt stinks like carpet cleaner." When Rourke (who holds his body here in a way that makes him look like a chicken carcass that was taken apart and reassembled by a blind crackhead with a science project due) and Stallone aren't taking turns going back in the alley to stomp a mud hole in each other's ass, Faye Dunaway and Alice Krige are celebrating Ladies' Night by rolling around on the floor, having a diva cat fight over this gorgeous hunk of man. They were going to include a scene showing what goes on there during Trivia Night, but then the picture would have been rated NC-17.

Next stop...the future, as we settle in for a little synthetic skin (and we don’t mean silicon boobs) at...

TAFFEY’S BAR, BLADE RUNNER (1982)

The world of Ridley Scott’s masterful Blade Runner is, for all its gorgeous set design, a pretty intimidating one: creepy warehouses full of nervous marionettes, run-down tenements and strangely glowing noodle shops, and huge corporate arcologies belching fire into the skies of Los Angeles. The only place we can see really spending a lot of time in the L.A. of 2019 is at Taffey Lewis’ rambunctious nightclub. It’s got a highly picturesque clientele, chainsmoking weird tobaccos and speaking the polyglot Creole of the moment; Taffey himself (greasily portrayed by Hy Pyke) always has Louie the bartender ready to hand out free drinks to anyone who can jeopardize his liquor license; and best of all, it’s a full-service erotic establishment, complete with robotic animal acts and the finest in genetically engineered bestiality. In fact, until her unexpected retirement, it was the only place in town where you could see the lovely Zhora (Joanna Cassidy, a million miles from Falcon Crest) “take the pleasures from the serpent which once corrupted Man”! Now that’s the kind of entertainment that money just can’t buy.

Tired of the city? Then grab a designated driver and we’ll head out to the desert for last call at...

THE BEER TAVERN, FEAST (2005)

This horror comedy, directed by John Gulager, is, if you'll excuse a real low ball of a compliment, by far the best of the movies produced by the Miramax-sponsored Project Greenlight TV series and talent contest. It's set in the Beer Tavern, a rickety-looking juke joint whose customers have to get all Straw Dogs when the place is besieged by slavering, man-eating monsters. It's a real mystery where they've come from -- the customers, I mean. The Beer Tavern looks to be set all by itself in the middle of a desert, and the people there appear to be a modest cross-section of everyone within a hundred miles who've worn out their welcome in all the more civilized establishments and no longer dare stick their head in the door anywhere else for fear of getting it shot off. Luckily, the bar is so well-equipped with secret exits and tunnels and hidey-holes, as well as such diversionary elements as the deer head mounted on the wall that one of the monsters, well, mounts, that it seems to have been constructed with a creature assault in mind. When Judah Friedlander is one of your best customers, it pays to take every precaution.

And, since we’re heading north anyway, might as well stop in for a quick one at...

THE PINK ROOM, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992)

Welcome to Canada! The conversation may not be all that stimulating ("I am the Great Went." "Don't expect a turkey dog here."), if you can even hear it, but the ambiance is out of this world. In our recent list of TV shows-turned-movies, we singled out this scene from Fire Walk with Me, noting that it's "set in what appears to be Satan's roadhouse." That's evident from the pulsing red lighting, the grinding, relentless rock band (playing a Lynch-composed track called "The Pink Room," which may or may not be the name of this place) and the array of seedy characters and half-naked zombie-women among the clientele. This is where innocence comes to die, as Laura Palmer, who long ago lost it, learns when she spots squeaky-clean pal Donna in a drugged topless clinch on the dance floor. As you can see from the above clip, somebody thinks this is one of the worst movie scenes of all time, which is ludicrous. It contains at least two signature Lynch shots I'll take to my grave: a vertiginous, drunken whirl past the repulsive Jacques Renault and into the lights above, and a pan across the unbelievably filthy floor, piled high with broken bottles and the smoking ash from thousands of cigarette butts.

Then it’s back across the border for a little marital advice at...

THE OVERLOOK HOTEL BAR FROM THE SHINING (1980)

On the surface, this nook in the corner of the Overlook Hotel's grand ballroom would appear to be the perfect bar. The stock is self-replenishing, you have the bartender's full attention, and most importantly, your money's no good here. On the other hand, since the place is supposed to be closed up for the winter and completely deserted except for you and your wife and son, there might be a problem: either you're crazy or the joint is haunted or both. But why worry about that? It's always New Year's Eve here, and Lloyd – "the best goddamn bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine – or Portland, Oregon for that matter" – will always be happy to serve you the hair of the dog. As long as you steer clear of awkward encounters with the waitstaff in the blood-red bathroom…what could possibly go wrong?

And speaking of bathrooms, we’re gonna take a quick break to go “powder our nose,” but we’ll meet you over in Chicago for Part Two of the Screengrab Pub Crawl!

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

Strange Bedfellows: Jack and Hillary

Paul Clark — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

This clip has been making the rounds for the past few days, so we figured we'd chime in. Normally, we don't go in for political or campaign-oriented discussion, but since Jack Nicholson is involved it's fair game. For most of the clip, this feels like a joke, like some bored YouTuber got it in his head to create a campaign spot using footage from old Jack movies. Even after the text starts popping up onscreen and it becomes clear that the creator of the spot is a Hillary supporter, it's still highly possible that we're dealing with that same semi-anonymous party. Then the final shot comes like a punchline — Jack himself, saying "I approved this message" directly to the camera — and it suddenly hits you that this is for real.

And that's what's so bizarre. I won't begrudge Jack his political opinions, especially since former President Clinton made a lot of big-shot Hollywood friends during his term in office. But what could have convinced him that this spot would work? What prevailed upon him to open with the Joker asking "who do ya trust?" Hate to break it to you buddy, but half of the clips you've included in your little love note to Hillary show you as a bad guy. Do you really think people will embrace a candidate because the Joker, Jack Torrance, and Colonel Jessup told them to?

Of course, it's entirely possible that Jack has another agenda entirely. By marshalling his crazy roles behind Hillary, perhaps he was doing his part to push the undecided toward Obama. It's the only possiblity that makes sense to me. But is this actually the case? Only your undertaker knows for sure.

The Top Ten Movies With Alternate Cuts, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

What is it about alternate cuts? A cynical marketing tool to sell an old movie or the chance for the filmmakers to finally unveil their true vision of the film? In the old days, studios wouldn't bother with keeping trims and outtakes; better to dump them in the sea and save the space for something more worthwhile. Most of the great filmmakers suffered from this. Orson Welles couldn't reconstruct his version of The Magnificent Ambersons, and even more recently, William Friedkin couldn't find the footage to finally unleash his preferred cut of Cruising. In the old days, if you wanted to see the alternate cut of a movie, you had to go to another country. Graham Greene didn't dig the shortened version of Once Upon A Time In The West, so he told his readers to go to Paris to see the uncut version. Friedkin went apeshit when he found out that Sorcerer, his beloved remake of The Wages of Fear, had been completely re-cut by the European distributors, so that the opening character prologues instead appeared as flashbacks, usually whenever a character was just about to blow up. Here, though, is a list of ten alternate cuts that are well worth your time. — Faisal A. Qureshi

BLADE RUNNER (1982, Ridley Scott)

How many different versions of this film are there? Warner Brothers did everyone except eBay bootleggers a favor when they put all five on one platter. First there was the U.S. voice-over cut, then the international cut (for a few frames of ultra-violence that those decadent Europeans dig) and then the authorized director's cut. Hold on a minute though, Ridley Scott kept saying that actually wasn't his final cut, so he went back to the editing room and came out with his definitive final cut (and let's not forget the 70mm Workprint that kicked the whole thing off). Basically, film lovers wouldn't have alternate cuts of movies if it wasn't for Blade Runner. It was the film that showed that ten years after the first release and proved you could still make cash from your old films. Which version is the best though? Well, that's up to you. I thought changing Rutger Hauer's "I want more life, fucker" to "father" kind of sucked and spoiled an otherwise decent flick, but WB did the decent thing and actually made sure all of them are there for your perusal. Heck, maybe I should go into the editing room and cut my own personally approved cut of Blade Runner. I mean, they do give you everything in this package.

THE SHINING (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

How can a filmmaker allow two different cuts of a film in release? If you're Stanley Kubrick, you can do everything. Whilst US audiences had the pleasure of a 147-minute cut of the Stephen King adaptation, the rest of the world just had the pleasure of a two-hour cut of the film, both approved by the director. Sure, Eyes Wide Shut had CGI figures covering some naughty bits, and he trimmed twenty minutes from 2001 after its world premiere, but this is different: Kubrick allowed both cuts to co-exist. What's the difference between them? Well, it's mostly scene shortening and dialogue trims, including bits where Scatman Crothers' character is going back to the Overlook Hotel to see what the heck is going on there. At one point you could get both versions on DVD, but with the recent re-release of the longer cut of The Shining, expect to see the shorter cut to disappear from existence. And did you know that there's a third version that had an alternate ending that was trimmed from all prints a week after its US release?

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)

As far as I'm aware, there are four versions of this film lying around, the longest being a five hour workprint that you can probably bit torrent now from bad VHS dupes. But Coppola re-released the original theatrical and the Redux edition together. Which one's better? For my money, I prefer the theatrical release, as Sheen just comes out as a mean brooding muthafucka. Redux is good to have, but for me, that music in the French plantation scene just spoiled the entire mood of the flick and the film never recovered completely from that moment on. Currently available on DVD but without the excellent Hearts of Darkness documentary included, what really spoils the film is cinematographer Vittorio Storraro's insistence that the film be transferred at his preferred retrospective Univisium 2:1 aspect ratio instead of 2.35:1 of its original release. If you want to see it properly, best to record a HD broadcast straight onto your hard drive, cause Storraro ain't having you watch it any other way.

EXORCIST 4 (2005, Renny Harlin, Paul Schrader)

Orson Welles had his ending for The Magnificent Ambersons re-shot by a studio hack, but enough of the film survived to be eventually regarded as a butchered classic. When Paul Schrader was kicked off the Exorcist prequel by Morgan Creek, rumors started circulating of his cut being some horror classic that had been 99% re-shot by studio hack Renny Harlin. A vocal internet campaign and the disastrous reception of the Harlin version resulted in Schrader's film being released to re-coup some of Morgan Creek's investment in the film, but the response was indifferent. Harlin's cut is goofy fun, with OTT sequences that make no sense but do crank up some foley effect on the soundtrack. Schrader's is Bergmanesque in comparison, interesting to watch and with a great performance by French pop star Billy Crawford as the possessed boy in need of exorcism. Both prequels are interesting to see a study in rhythm: Harlin has the actors play it fast and cuts every couple of seconds, whilsts Schrader meditates on his scenes, trying to build the tension up slowly.

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, Orson Welles)

Orson Welles' sleazy cop thriller was first known only in a ninety-minute version, then in an extended 108-min cut that was found and re-released in 1976, but cineastes had to wait until 1998, when Rick Schmidlin and Walter Murch did a re-cut of the film based on a fifty-eight-page memo that Welles had sent the studio. (Needless to say, the studio ignored him completely.) After the restoration was released, the 1976 cut was retired to the vault, and what a pity that was. I'm not a fan of the restored edition; the limitations of the picture restoration can be seen in the opening sequence, when the picture softens at each point where a title had originally appeared. But the worse aspect is the removal of the excellent Henry Mancini score. Universal has no plans to re-release both cuts on DVD so until then, compare both openings and see what you'd like.

Click here for Part 2!

Ten Movies for a Snow Day

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It’s that time of the year when Screengrab readers in certain parts of the country can pretty much count on an unexpected day off or two thanks to Mother Nature’s fury. In my part of the country (Austin, TX), said fury usually comes in the form of about a half-inch of freezing drizzle, but having grown up in the Northeast, I am certainly well acquainted with the concept of the Snow Day. And what could be better on a day when you can’t leave the house than a pile of movies featuring a veritable blizzard’s worth of snow?

Herewith, then, the Screengrab’s list of the ten snowiest movies. Please note that we have not included the Chevy Chase/Chris Elliott movie Snow Day. We wouldn’t do that to you.

Ice Station Zebra

Sure, for much of its running time, this much-maligned Rock Hudson vehicle is a submarine movie, but the climactic scenes are set at the Arctic Circle, where the crew has been sent to track down some important Cold War whatsis. In his 1969 review, Roger Ebert describes the action thusly: “Hudson and his men start out with parkas, mufflers, goggles and the whole works. But by the time of the confrontation with the Russian commander, all the leading actors are shown bareheaded and barefaced. At Arctic temperatures, their noses would freeze, crack and fall off before they got their argument well launched. Another funny thing: When the actors talk, their breath doesn't freeze.”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

There are several Bond movies that explore the action-packed possibilities of snow, notably For Your Eyes Only, but when in doubt we always opt for the golden age of Lazenby. Here 007 puts his skis to work both on the slopes (dig that nighttime rear-screen projection) and as weapons of strangulation and defenestration. Always a multi-tasker, our man Bond.

Quintet

I’ve written about Robert Altman’s frostbitten foray into post-apocalyptic sci-fi before, so to quote myself: “Set in a future Ice Age, Quintet is so white with snow and glare, you will notice streaks of dust on your television screen that were hitherto imperceptible. To give it that extra ‘futuristic’ edge, Altman has smeared his camera lens with enough lube to fuel a three-day orgy at Elliott Gould’s place.” Stare at it long enough and you will go blind, one way or another.

The Shining

Sure, a snow day sounds like all fun and games. But then you realize you’re trapped in the house with your family for who knows how long, and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets a bad case of cabin fever and starts chasing you around with an axe. Our advice? Lead them outside into the hedge maze. This works best if they’re drunk and/or completely insane.

Fargo

Forget the compelling argument about whether or not the Coens have contempt for their heroine Marge Gunderson. What we really want to know is – what do they think of this guy?

Alive

This is an especially good one to watch from the safety of your couch on your unplanned day off. See what leaving the house gets you? Before you know it, you’ve crash-landed in the snow-capped Andes and the seatmate you bummed a magazine from early in the flight is now gnawing on your elbow. Better take an extra day off tomorrow just to be on the safe side.

A Simple Plan

From the golden age of snow noir (approx. Feburary 1996 to December 1998) comes Sam Raimi’s adaptation of the Scott Smith novel about earflapped yokels squabbling over a sack o’ cash rescued from another crashed plane. If you’re only familiar with the recent work of Billy Bob Thornton, it might surprise you to learn he once played characters who weren’t hard-assed authority figures. To wit:

Dreamcatcher

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this list contains two movies based on Stephen King books, since the horrormeister is a native of Maine and therefore no stranger to the perils of wintry weather. Of course, in Dreamcatcher those perils include ass-weasels from outer space and Morgan Freeman’s equally extraterrestrial eyebrows, so this one doesn’t qualify as the most naturalistic look at snowbound life on this list.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Honestly, you can skip Quintet if you want. McCabe is the Altman masterpiece you must move to the head of your Netflix queue immediately. And if you’ve never seen it, do not – repeat DO NOT – watch the clip below.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow

It’s been a while, but as best we can recall, this movie did not make a lick of sense. Julia Ormond is a scientist investigating a conspiracy using her unique, uh, sense of snow. Save this one for last, when you’re really tired.

And Now, Movies With People in Bear Suits

Gwynne Watkins — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, Ames, Iowa resident Daniel Stender posed the following question to Roger Ebert's "Answer Man" column:

I am a fine arts student at Iowa State University. Currently I'm painting a series depicting movie scenes with people in bear suits. So far I have painted a scene from The Shining and a scene from the The Science of Sleep. I am really proud of what I have created so far, but I've hit a creative road block; I can't think of any more movies with people dressed as bears.

Not to worry, Danny — The Screengrab has got your back!

Here are some off-the-cuff suggestions from our bloggers:

Paul: The Avengers. That scene, bad as it is, is sort of unforgettable.

John: Jackass and Encino Man, both of which involve panda bears. Given Jackass’ status as a serious documentary, I’m not sure it counts. However, Pauly Shore and Caveman-Brendan Frasier slapping around a guy in a panda costume in a theme park most certainly counts.

Matthew: The more recent version of The Wicker Man, as in:

For the record, Answer Man suggested Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game. I'm personally gonna go with Grizzly Man. Damn those bear suits looked real.

S-Horror?

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

As we gear up for another spring full of rampaging monsters and psychopathic serial killers, Desson Thompson in the Washington Post wonders if something elemental to the whole concept of the horror movie isn't missing: the victim.

After the usual handwringing over the 'torture porn' generation, the artist formerly known as Howe goes on to make some pretty compelling points: the horror films of today — even the stylized, artsy ones influenced by or coming from the J-horror movement — tend to focus entirely on the means by which the victims are dispatched: intricate traps, complex schemes, gruesome tortures, gigantic monsters. Very little attention, on the other hand, is given to providing the audience with an identification figure: while in previous horror films we were at least able to identify with the person going through such terrifying treatment (as in Rosemary's Baby) or with the person doing the terrorizing (as in Psycho), the modern-day horror film has lost its focus, one way or another, on humanity and gives us precious little to care about beyond the novelty of learning how the next victim will snuff it. "When we think of the horror classics", says Thomson, "we don't recall the gruesome acts so much as the people who weathered them. Think of Rosemary Woodhouse, the determined mother in Rosemary's Baby, who faces the prospect her baby has been fathered by the Devil. Remember Regan MacNeil, the sweet pre-teen of The Exorcist, whose satanic transformation forces heroics from two soft-spoken priests. Even Jack Torrance, the demented murderer at the heart of The Shining, affects us because he's a husband and father gone horribly awry, not some abstract ax wielder."

Providing a much-needed antidote for this alienating inhumanity in the horror genre, he claims, are a new wave of Spanish horror directors, presaged by Guillermo del Toro in the disturbing Pan's Labyrinth and followed up by two of his proteges, director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez, whose dark, moody The Orphanage is enjoying limited release in the U.S. They both cite the Spanish cultural heritage of the Day of the Dead (which is "not something that you look upon as horrifying or sad or terrible but as a way to conciliate with death; you bring death home instead of trying not to think about it", according to Sanchez) and the country's all-too-recent emergence from the shadows of fascism as reasons why this brand of non-gory, emotionally powerful, human-centered horror is hitting home with their audiences.

Whether or not The Orphanage will trigger a string of "S-horror" hits in the U.S., they're doing quite well at home; the movie was last year's highest-grossing film in Spain, outstripping even the blockbuster foreign imports like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

(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

Vintage Trailer Roundup: Halloween Hangover Edition

Peter Smith — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Werewolves on Wheels

Here’s one of my favorite B-movie trailers, advertising "the most thrilling horror motorcycle movie ever made" — and as it turns out, the first. It seems that by 1971, just two years after Easy Rider, the motorcycle-movie well was running dry, so producers started jumping on gimmicks to liven up the genre. . . and bless ‘em for it. To be honest, I’ve never actually seen Werewolves on Wheels in its entirety, although by all accounts I’m not missing much. Then again, there’s no way anything could possibly live up to this trailer.

Torso

Here’s another classic, all the more so for how it tries to make itself look respectable by advertising itself as a production of Carlo Ponti, "the producer of Doctor Zhivago." After all, a bloated David Lean epic dovetails so neatly with classic giallo fare. Torso is an Eli Roth favorite, and it’s easy to see the film’s influence on movies like Hostel. But the teaser itself had to be an influence on Edgar Wright, who paid homage to the use of the endlessly repeated title in his Grindhouse trailer Don't.

The Shining

The greatest horror-movie teaser ever? Yes, it just may be. This goes to show that you don’t need to sell the story, or even show the actors’ faces, to effectively sell the movie. I love that Kubrick makes us wait for the blood — and that he was somehow able to convince the MPAA that it was actually rusty-colored water that came pouring out of the elevator shaft. Even if you don’t like the movie itself, the teaser is pretty stunning.

— Paul Clark