The Screengrab : three kings

The Best & Worst Get Rich Quick Schemes In Cinema History! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THREE KINGS (1999)

By all accounts, writer/director David O. Russell is the kind of tantrum-throwing brat even Christian Bale would recommend for anger management classes. George Clooney came to blows with him on the set of Three Kings, and Lily Tomlin surely contemplated crushing his nuts during his notorious freak-out on the set of I ♥ Huckabees...but even Clooney admits the dude’s got chops, and Russell’s tale of U.S. soldiers attempting to heist millions in Kuwaiti bullion from Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War is still the best (fictional) cinematic depiction of America’s poisonous love-hate relationship with Hussein and Iraq. I learned more about our nation’s cynical, fucked-up Middle East policy from Russell’s entertaining “comedy” caper than I did from ten years of Bush family press conferences. The moral of the story: there’s definitely money to be made in Iraq, if your conscience isn’t bothered (like Clooney’s Major Archie Gates) by the thought of letting innocent civilians die as collateral damage, or (like Nora Dunn’s TV reporter Adriana Cruz) by the sight of birds dying in war-made oil slicks, or (like Mark Wahlberg’s Sgt. Troy Barlow) the realization that even the bad guys (here represented by Saïd Taghmaoui’s electrifying Iraqi interrogator) are suffering while the war profiteers get plenty rich, plenty quick. (AO)

BOTTLE ROCKET (1996)

Wes Anderson’s debut boasts few of the stylistic hallmarks of his subsequent work, though that doesn’t make it any less distinctive. Bottle Rocket focuses on the misadventures of wannabe-criminal Dignan (Owen Wilson) and his best friend Anthony (Luke Wilson), both of them aimlessly searching for contentment, companionship and love in the Texas suburbs. Instead of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums’ meticulously arranged compositions, Anderson’s cinematography is much more loose, which leaves the proceedings visually bland but, unlike the stultifying The Darjeeling Limited, full of ramshackle life. The director’s attempts at pathos are somewhat undercut by his scripting, most notably with regards to Anthony’s sketchy, preposterous relationship with motel housekeeper Inez (Lumi Cavazo). Yet if the film lacks a bit of polish, it nonetheless is both consistently funny and narratively efficient, two vital qualities that are most fully on display during Dignan and Anthony’s outstanding robbery of a local bookstore. (NS)

KIDS IN THE HALL: BRAIN CANDY (1996)

Sometimes a get-rich-quick scheme isn’t exactly a scheme, as such. Sometimes it’s not even intentional. All Kevin McDonald’s Dr. Chris Cooper and his team of pharmaceuticals technicians wanted to do was create a pill that helped chronically depressed people cope with their daily lives…chemically. What they ended up doing was creating Gleemonex, a drug that isolates your happiest moment and replays it over and over in your head, condemning you to comatose bliss forever. Naturally, Cooper’s employers recognize the potential to make obscene amounts of money, and the race is on to see if Dr. Cooper will be corrupted by the cash himself, or do the right thing. The first (and, so far, only) Kids in the Hall movie is inconsistent and occasionally pretty bad, but give it credit for one of the darkest-toned comedies of the last few decades, in which doing the right thing and condemning millions of people to paralyzing depression and sadness are synonymous. (LP)

LOST IN AMERICA (1985)

In Albert Brooks' anti-yuppie satire, Brooks plays an ad executive who is so programmed with his fantasy of how his career should go that when he isn't given the promotion he's expecting -- because, his boss explains, he's "too clever" to be wasted on the empty-suit job -- and offered a different promotion that involves a move to New York City, he blows his top and takes a flame thrower to every bridge in sight. Convinced that they've reached a stage in their lives where they're ready to move beyond conventional standards of success, Brooks and his wife (Julie Hagerty) liquidate their assets, including their house, and set out to explore the country in a Winnebago the size of Rhode Island with a $145,000 nest egg tucked in their purse. Unfortunately, Hagerty is seized by a gambling mania in Las Vegas and pisses away the bulk of their money, and Brooks makes a stab at using his professional skills to persuade the casino boss (Garry Marshall) to return their money; he improvises a whole campaign about how the casino can benefit from the free publicity it'll get once the story gets out that it's a gambling den with "heart." Technically, this is not a get-rich scheme but a desperate, sweaty, make-it-as-if-this-hadn't-happened scheme. But if more people would react this way to the loss of everything they have instead of turning ashen and wandering into traffic, the past six or seven months would have been a lot more fun. (PN)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:30:00 GMT

10. FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

The big rap against Full Metal Jacket has always been that it peaks too soon – that the episodic second half of the movie doesn't live up to the tight, intense and brutally funny boot camp sequence it follows. (The other knock on Jacket is that it was filmed in England. Please. You people don't think 2001 was actually shot in outer space, do you?) Despite countless homages and parodies of R. Lee Ermey's indelible drill instructor Sgt. Hartman (many of them courtesy of Ermey himself), however, it is the Vietnam portion of Full Metal Jacket that has proved most influential on war movies of recent vintage. Efforts ranging from Jarhead to Redacted to HBO's recent Generation Kill have drawn on its loose structure, black humor and profanely poetic dialogue (much of which is ripped directly from the pages of Gustav Hasford's novel, The Short-Timers). The complaint has never made much sense to me anyway, as it seems clear that Kubrick is deliberately contrasting the regimented structure of basic training with the free-form chaos of actual warfare. None of this is meant as a knock on the movie's endlessly rewatchable (not to mention quotable) first half, but merely to suggest that Kubrick's film as a whole has held up far better than many of its contemporaries, and deserves a spot on any list of the greatest war movies.

9. THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966)

This epic by the late Gillo Pontecorvo, deals with the French-Algerian war and is made in a black-and-white, pseudo-documentary style. It's actually black and white in more ways than one, and is in fact a brief for the necessity of the war and the tactics of the Algerians who resorted to urban terrorism, an argument that is given weight by the movie's cunning appearance of documentary realism. It even serves up a surrogate for French audiences, a "Colonel Mathieu" (played by Jean Martin), who despite doing his job of fighting to suppress the revolution makes speeches explaining why he's on the wrong side of history and all he can do is postpone the moment of reckoning. (Finding just the right tone for the movie to work on a propaganda level did not come easily to the filmmaking team. Their original plan called for the central figure to be a French paratrooper who no longer believes in his country's cause; Pontecorvo hoped to attract Paul Newman for the part.) The Battle of Algiers' status as a classic of its kind was recertified in 2003 when it was widely reported that the Pentagon had arranged a screening to brush up on its understanding of how to wage war against an insurgency.

8. HOPE AND GLORY (1987)

The entity of war can take on vastly different appearances (and meanings) depending on the perspective of the observer. For politicians and generals, it’s all about pins in maps and cold, pragmatic calculations about strategic advantage and acceptable losses. For a soldier in combat, those pins and calculations manifest as potential death from above, while for a child growing up in the suburbs of London during the Blitz (like the autobiographical protagonist of John Boorman’s home front epic, Hope and Glory), all the rockets and bombs can seem like scary but exciting fireworks. With his father away fighting the Nazis, young Bill (Sebastian Rice-Edwards), his two sisters, his flawed, brave mother (Sarah Miles) and all their friends and neighbors face the absurdities, hardships and occasional tragedies of life during wartime with uniquely British pluck and humor in this charming reminder of the precious humanity both endangered and protected by the brutality of combat.

7. THREE KINGS (1999)

Based on hearsay and direct evidence, David O. Russell is a giant asshole. According to Hollywood lore, he literally came to blows with Three Kings star George Clooney, who later said, “Will I work with David ever again? Absolutely not. Never. Do I think he's tremendously talented and do I think he should be nominated for Oscars? Yeah.” And while Kings didn’t ultimately receive any Academy Award nominations, it earned its spot on this list as both a great action/heist flick and also (arguably) the best and most accessible Iraq war movie to date. True, the story (about Clooney’s rogue Special Forces officer enlisting three Reservists in a plot to steal Kuwaiti bullion -- gold, not the little cubes you put in hot water to make soup) is set during the first Iraq War and not the current quagmire, but the details of desert combat, the pop cultural self-awareness of Today’s Army and the cultural disconnect, muddled motives and moral ambiguity of U.S./Iraqi relations are sadly even more topical now than when the film was originally released. Three Kings also receives bonus points for the surprisingly sympathetic performance of Saïd Taghmaoui (currently costarring with Don Cheadle in Traitor) as an Iraqi interrogator, one of the most layered and fascinating depictions of Muslim rage in recent American filmmaking.

6. THE THIN RED LINE (1998)

The classic novel Guadalcanal, written by the restlessly brilliant James Jones, had been brought to the screen once before, in a generally mediocre 1962 adaptation by Andrew Marton. It was some fifteen years after that when Terrence Malick announced his interest in a remake; those familiar with his career – inchoate, fitful, but inspired almost beyond comprehension – would not have been surprised if you’d told them in 1978 that it would be twenty more years before it ever hit the screen. When it did, though, as Malick’s first movie in two decades, it reminded everyone who saw it why they were willing to wait so long: it’s a breathtaking film, blending Malick’s twin obsessions of casual human violence and the mystical immortality of nature with what turns out to be a stunningly profound understanding of Jones’ novel. A young James Caviezel, in his breakout role, almost painfully reflects Private Witt’s agonies over the rightness of his actions, and it’s through him that we are made to realize the brutal disruption war makes in both the human psyche and the exterior world. As with his other works, Malick here almost overwhelms you with the sheer intractable power of nature, only to completely disrupt that mood by showing how casually people are willing to destroy it. The film, gorgeously shot by John Toll, featuring a hugely powerful soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, and starring a powerhouse cast (including terrific performances from Ben Chaplin, Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly and Elias Koteas) that does its job well without drawing movie-star attention to itself, is simply the finest war film of the 1990s.

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

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

James Caan vs. The Cookie Monster

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The other day we caught up with the congenial David O. Russell, the director who rassled George Clooney while making Three Kings and whose tirade against I Heart Huckabees star Lily Tomlin became a YouTube sensation. At the time, all we knew was that James Caan had left the set of Russell’s latest opus, Nailed, for the usual reason: “creative differences.” Now that we know what those differences were, the story is even better.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “The trouble started Wednesday on the first of Caan's two days of shooting the role of a U.S. speaker of the house who chokes to death on a cookie. Russell asked him to cough as he choked, but Caan argued that the character couldn't cough and choke to death at the same time. Russell suggested that they shoot it both ways, but the actor expressed distrust that his version would be considered and left the South Carolina set.”

Please, YouTube. We’re begging you. Come through for us here, because we need to see this. How long did this cookie dispute go on? Was there some tension over the choice of cookie? Perhaps Russell wanted an Oreo and Caan insisted on a Nutter Butter. It’s just a shame they couldn’t work this out, but according to the Reporter, Caan’s part is being recast.

David O. Russell: People Person

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:30:00 GMT

A new David O. Russell film is in production, which must mean that the notoriously prickly filmmaker isn’t getting along with somebody. George Clooney was the first to report that Russell might not be all sunshine and roses on the set; actor and director famously had “creative differences” while making Three Kings. Clooney elaborated in an interview with Playboy in 2000. “David is in many ways a genius, though I learned that he's not a genius when it comes to people skills…He yelled and screamed at people all day, from day one…he screamed at the script supervisor and made her cry. I wrote him a letter and said, 'Look, I don't know why you do this. You've written a brilliant script, and I think you're a good director. Let's not have a set like this. I don't like it and I don't work well like this.'…He turned on me and said, 'Why don't you just worry about your fucked-up act? You're being a dick. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me.' I'm looking at him like he's out of his mind. Then he started banging me on the head with his head. He goes, 'Hit me, you pussy. Hit me.' Then he got me by the throat and I went nuts. I had him by the throat. I was going to kill him. Kill him.”

So that went well, and although it’s sad that there’s no video evidence of this dust-up – at least, none that’s surfaced so far – the same can’t be said for I Heart Huckabees. Anyone reading this has no doubt seen the infamous footage of Russell flipping out on Lily Tomlin, but we’ll take any excuse to post it again.

The good times roll on, as the New York Post blog Popwrap reports. Russell's romantic comedy Nailed, co-written with Kristin “daughter of Al” Gore, concerns a small-town waitress who gets a nail lodged in her head, then finds a “clueless young senator” to champion her cause. The cast includes Jessica Biel, James Marsden, Jake Gyllenhaal…and, until last week, James Caan. According to Caan’s publicist, the actor “did amicably part ways with this production due to creative differences. He wished all of the actors and production crew well when he departed.” One wonders if these creative differences took the form of knuckle sandwiches and, more importantly, whether video evidence exists. It does kind of seem like Russell was asking for trouble in casting the similarly hot-headed Caan in the first place. But apparently even seemingly mild-mannered Gyllenhaal has been infected by Russell’s good vibes. “The crew was filming at the South Carolina State House on Wednesday when Jake began acting like a diva, according to one report. ‘He was complaining that the room was too small, complaining about the temperature, complaining about his chair,’ the source says. ‘It was like watching a two-year-old having a meltdown every five minutes.’ ”

You know the Cloon is loving it. As he told Entertainment Weekly after the YouTube clips from Huckabees surfaced, “I felt bad for Lily but I also felt a little vindicated for anyone that thought that that had anything to do with me on [Three Kings]. But, you know, the last thing in the world I would have done is stick it on the Internet. I don't even know how to get onto YouTube.” The question is: does James Caan?