The Screengrab : tim burton

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Ten)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:45:00 GMT

The Worst:

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

Some comedian, possibly Seinfeld, did a routine once that perfectly captured my own pubescent experience during the final moments of The Empire Strikes Back, that sinking, slowly dawning realization that...holy shit! To Be Continued? Is THAT where this is heading? Are you fucking kidding me, Lucas? You’re gonna make me wait THREE YEARS to find out what happens to Han Solo? Last time around, the big finale was the Rebels blowing up the Death Star and this time it’s...Luke getting a new hand? As an adult, of course, I eventually learned to accept years-long gaps between, say, seasons of The Sopranos and Lost (and...uh...girlfriends), but way back when, it seemed like George Lucas was pulling a cruel prank on his faithful fans. (Little did we freakin’ know...) (AO)

RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)

Bad:

Worse:

My esteemed colleague Andrew Osborne said of this last week: "And then, to make matters worse, Egghead suddenly materializes at the grand finale Ewok rave with the shiny, happy ghosts of Yoda and Ben Kenobi...a scene Lucas inconceivably managed to make even worse decades later by adding Hayden Christensen." Yessir, this movie was the first clue that George Lucas had no idea how to separate his best impulses from his worst. What can I say? I was 11, and I knew that bouncing Ewoks singing a creepy-awful song while the ghosts of Jedis past grin at Luke was a miserable way to end things. Then, when Lucas got around to taking a crap on his legacy with the three prequels, suddenly we had to deal with whiny ol' block of wood Hayden Christensen taking scary ol' Egghead Vader's place, while the Ewoks sang a New Age anthem that left me longing for the relative greatness of the "Yub Jub" song. Hey, Lucas, here's an idea: you put Lawrence Tierney under that mask and then have the Rebels celebrate their victory on a planet where the inhabitants aren't covered in fur. Because when the furry people in your universe get together to celebrate, everyone loses. (HC)

DR. T & THE WOMEN (2000)

Critics were unkind to this movie, but I'm willing to cut Altman some slack. It's not that bad. Even as it states that Dallas society forces its women to interact with constant near-brainless patter, it suggests that underneath each perfectly coiffed hairstyle is a powerful intelligence trapped in a socially empty cage. But it all falls apart at the end. After the above clip, when Dr. Travis' daughter runs away from her wedding with her maid of honor, everything in Dr. Travis' life cruelly falls to pieces and he drives off in an increasingly frantic rain, which suddenly turns into the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, and then he's deposited in Big Bend, where he helps a young woman deliver a baby. I mean, I get the point: somewhere over the rainbow, Dr. Travis is practicing the business of bringing life into this world for the needy rather than assisting rich women with their petty neuroses. But Altman asks too much of the viewer with his sudden left turn, and it doesn't make a lick of sense. (HC)

PLANET OF THE APES (2001)

Tim Burton was in a bind when it came to ending his remake or reboot or re-imagining or retardification of Planet of the Apes in 2001. After all, he couldn’t go with the original surprise ending and expect it to wow audiences all over again. At the same time, it’s Planet of the Apes, so it needs some sort of mind-blower of a twist ending. Ultimately, Burton decided not to spend too much time thinking it through. Wouldn’t it be cool if the astronaut played by Mark Wahlberg manages to get back to his own time…only when he looks up at the Lincoln Memorial, he sees the face of his ape nemesis Tim Roth? And then a bunch of ape police show up with guns? Whoa! It was a nifty image to be sure, but could it possibly be explained by the events leading up to it in the movie? Attempts were made to justify it, but none by Tim Burton. "It was a reasonable cliffhanger that could be used in case Fox or another filmmaker wanted to do another movie," Burton claimed on the DVD commentary. Sadly (or not), no one has taken on the challenge…although as you’ll see in the clip above, some enterprising young people did make an attempt to improve on Burton’s finale. There may be some plausibility issues here, as well. (SVD)

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE (2003)

Run, Kate Winslet, run! Look to the sky and scream, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" And then, ohmigodIdidn'tseethatcoming, it turns out that the anti-death penalty activist framed his own death so that they could prove that the Texas legal system gives innocent people the death penalty. No! And the smoking gun (or, in this case, unsmoking gun) was always right there, just beyond her fingertips! No! No! No! Well, actually yes. As in Alan Parker's repulsive Mississippi Burning, which suggested that change came to Mississippi in the 1960s through the work of white FBI agents rather than the brave, but inconveniently often non-white, people of the Civil Rights Movement, here Alan Parker tries to suggest that an anti-capital punishment advocate in freakin' kill-happy Texas has to frame himself to prove that the Texas justice system occasionally puts innocent people on death row. Jesus, a thousand times no. Here's Roger Ebert from his review: "let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein." I might have gone with Idi Amin, but I think you get the point. (HC)

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)

Since we spoke earlier of how a great movie earns its ending by putting us through so much with the characters we feel they deserve their closing moments, let’s look at a movie that goes about it entirely the wrong way. There’s no question that the Lord of the Rings trilogy earns a good ending; the cast of characters we know and love absolutely deserve a great moment of closure after all that we’ve been through with them over the space of three entire movies. The problem is, Peter Jackson doesn’t give us one ending; he gives us a dozen. There are so many moments of building climax and rest that it starts to seem like a joke when the credits don’t actually roll through one false stop after another. Sure, Jackson and his writers were working with an incredibly long source trilogy, and to their credit, they did cut out plenty; it was just all the wrong stuff. For a director who seemed all too willing to hack bits out at the beginning of the series, he seemed downright reluctant to lose anything at the end, no matter how tedious it became; and even then, some of the choices he made were dubious. Why did we lose the Harrowing of the Shire – one of the more gripping parts of the final novel – so we could have ten minutes of the hobbits bouncing around on a feather bed? For a movie that gave us scene after scene of excitement in the early goings – for that matter, for a movie whose every installment left you begging for the next movie to come out – the endgame left even the most diehard fans longing for the credits to roll.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Albert Finney in BIG FISH (2003)

How powerful is Albert Finney’s death scene in Tim Burton’s tall tale of a man with larger-than-life recollections of his own personal history? Well, let’s put it this way: according to New York magazine, “The last his family saw of [monologist Spalding Gray] was Saturday, January 10, [2004] when he took the kids to see Big Fish, the story of a dying father’s relationship with his son, at the Loews Village on Third Avenue and 11th Street. After the movie, Gray wept.” And then, 24 hours later, he tossed himself off the Staten Island ferry into the East River. Perhaps the special power of the movie for Gray (and creative types in general, myself included) is best captured in the final line, after Finney (as Edward Bloom, a character played in flashbacks by Ewan McGregor) inspires his son (Billy Crudup) to mitigate the tragedy of death through art and fantasy: “A man tells a story over and over so many times he becomes the story. In that way, he is immortal.” And, frankly, isn’t reimagining the world and hoping for some existence beyond it (in Heaven and/or in films, novels, scientific discoveries, progeny, blog entries, etc.) more or less the heart of human existence? For me, the greatest terror is thinking my consciousness and memories (not to mention the existence of my friends, relatives...even acquaintances and pets) will be erased forever at death. In particular, I dread the eventual demise of my parents and cling to hopes and fantasies that somehow there’s more than an empty void at the end of our road after all the fun and struggle of life...and so Burton’s film (about a father’s death transformed by flights of fancy) hit me like a 2x4, unleashing an unexpected, uncontrollable torrent of emotion unlike anything I’ve ever experienced at the movies (or maybe it was just the cameo by Miley Cyrus, in her feature film debut, back when she was known as “Destiny"). (AO)

Rutger Hauer in BLADE RUNNER (1982)

Hauer’s Roy Batty is one of the screen’s most nuanced villains; while he’s a ruthless killer who’s not above playing with his victims the way a cat does a gutted rat, he’s also got a higher purpose. Roy is a replicant – an artificial life-form programmed to live only a short time so his intellect and emotions won’t develop to a human level – but in his case, it’s too late: he reaches a near-total self-awareness before his time is up. At the end of this science-fiction masterpiece, Roy toys with Detective Rick Deckard, who has wiped out most of his friends; he brutalizes him while taunting his own moral superiority: “Aren’t you the good man?” But nothing can be done; Roy knows he’s on the way out, and his last act isn’t to kill, but to save Deckard’s life. As he fades out into nonexistence, he drives home the film’s central question of what it means to be human, reminding Deckard that when he dies, his unique mind and irreplaceable memories will be gone forever, “like tears in the rain.” It’s a philosophically deep and emotionally powerful ending in a genre that rarely sees the two combined. (LP)

Duane Jones in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

The zombie movie has reached its oversaturation point and is now just kind of annoying, but the movie that started it all, George Romero’s low-budget classic Night of the Living Dead, still holds the power to chill, and its final scene – extremely massive spoiler alert, for those of you who have somehow missed out on seeing this over the last forty years – is a real gut-punch. Level-headed, competent Ben (played by Duane Jones in what was at the time a controversial casting decision, placing an African-American actor in the lead against a group of whites) has managed to fend off seemingly endless onslaughts of flesh-hungry zombies, conquering threats from without and within, over the course of a nightmarish day when his life was constantly in danger. Finally securing a measure of peace, he beds down in the abandoned farmhouse for the night, plotting how he will make his escape the following morning; when he awakens, without foreshadowing and without fanfare, he is fatally shot by a passing sheriff’s posse who mistake him for one of the living dead he’s spent the entire rest of the movie fighting. It’s an inspired, if exceptionally cruel, ending, and it gives us the first glimpse of the nasty social commentary that would feature in Romero’s later work. (LP)

Faye Dunaway & Warren Beatty in BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

The demise of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker at the end of Arthur Penn’s paradigm-busting gangster epic shouldn’t have come as any kind of surprise; after all, anyone who knew the history of the two criminals knew how they met their end, and had probably seen the photos of their car, pierced with hundreds of bullet holes. What Penn’s unforgettable death scene accomplishes, then, isn’t shock because of what happens, but rather how it’s depicted; refusing to take the easy way out, Penn forces us to watch Bonnie and Clyde (with whom we’ve spend the entire movie being forced into a bizarre sympathy) die the way they likely did in real life: in a horrible, convulsing, twitching, gory, pitiful mass of blood and gore. Different people took the ending in different ways, from the straights who saw it as a long-overdue comeuppance to the heads who felt it was another example of rebel heroes dying at the hands of the Man; but no one who saw it forgot it easily, and it substantially upped the ante for violence in Hollywood. From then on, no death would be simple and bloodless and abstracted; over the next two decades, the town would be drowned in gore from movies that picked up the gauntlet that Bonnie and Clyde threw down. (LP)

Orson Welles in CITIZEN KANE (1941)

Orson Welles was already a restless, experimental genius at the astonishingly young age of 26 when he brought Citizen Kane to the screen. It’s widely considered one of the greatest films of all time for good reasons, many of which stem from Welles’ desire to rewrite the rules of filmmaking and start fresh from the ground up; and he doesn’t waste any time, putting the central character’s dramatic death scene at the beginning of the movie and working back from there to solve the mystery. At the top of the film, we see Charles Foster Kane as a bedridden old man, and before we even know who this man surrounded by opulent treasures is, he expires, letting a snow globe crash to the floor, and with his last breath, hissing the word ‘Rosebud’ – the key to the rest of the story. Welles later expressed dissatisfaction with this scene, saying he never quite felt right about it and writing off ‘Rosebud’ as a cheap Freudian gimmick, but its power has remained: it’s still counted as one of the most remembered death scenes in cinema, ‘Rosebud’ is at the top of the list of cinematic famous last words, and the whole sequence has been parodied thousands of times in dozens of media. (LP)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

The Hype Report: The X File on Winona Ryder

Phil Nugent — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

[Being the latest in an infrequent series devoted to movie-related puff pieces so over the top that they're a show all by themselves..]

So it turns out that Winona Ryder is in the new Star Trek movie, where she plays the Vulcan ambassador Sarek's baby mama, and Vanessa Thorpe's profile of Ryder and the current state of her career has kind of science-fiction vibe to it itself. Did you know that Ryder was once "acclaimed as the most promising, most beautiful and most fashionable star of her generation - the generation, that is, that had become known as 'X'?" It's news to me, and I think I'm of the generation that had become known as 'X' myself, so long as we're all committed to writing in the style that has become known as "funny-looking'." Thorpe must have worried that we'd think it was just her, so she cites a back-up source: Ryder's father, who says that twenty or so years ago, his daughter and Johnny Depp were "the hottest couple in the United States." All together now--ewwwwww!! Is it possible that when all those folks at the red carpet premieres leaned across the police barricades and screamed, "You're the most promising, most beautiful, and most fashionable star of your generation," they were talking to Johnny? Thorpe herself undercuts her argument by describing Ryder's features as "elfin", a term I've always associated more with the likes of Michael J. Pollard or the guy on Two and a Half Men who isn't Charlie Sheen than anyone who might qualify as the most beautiful anything. It's possible that Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom in The Lord of the Rings have forever rewritten the rule book on this one, but not in my apartment.

The thing is, I've always thought that Ryder was beautiful, and that's why I never tortured myself a lot--a little, but not a lot--wondering why she had a career. It was easy for men, including men as smart and weird as Depp and Tim Burton, to have high hopes for her in her Beetlejuice days: she was, one more time, a very beautiful, very young girl who liked to tell interviewers that was reading Ian McEwan and do guest spots in Mojo Nixon videos. You could probably hear the puddles forming from all those geeks' hearts melting across the country. Thorpe seems to take it on faith that there's a general agreement that she was just dazzling in Scorsese's The Age of Innocence--where, to show her commitment to her craft, she allowed the makeup people to do her best to homely her up--and in the Gillian Armstrong production of Little Woman, which is indeed probably the best movie that has her close to its center. But it's also true that in both these movies, which we made when she was in her early twenties, she comes across as, emotionally, about twelve years old. When she was engaged in real life to Johnny Depp, who was eight years her senior, it was reported that no less an expert on grown-up behavior than Cher had warned her that she wasn't ready for such a leap. in the movies, seeing her married off to either Daniel Day Lewis or Gabriel Byrne was creepy, in ways the filmmakers could not have intended.

Ryder's last big-deal role was probably in 1999's Girl, Interrupted, a movie that wound up belonging her co-star, Angelina Jolie (who won an Oscar for it), and with good reason. Thorpe does her best to characterize Ryder's fallen star sound the result of some combination of a conspiracy and a perfect storm of "bad creative decisions, or perhaps just bad luck, which gradually began to edge Ryder deeper into a kind of Hollywood twilight." Yes, there was the shoplifting incident, which fed into other stories, like the one about her flaking out on the set of The Godfather III, gave her a reputation for being a troublesome fruitcake. But the fact is that Ryder's demons are small-time compared to those of Robert Downey, Jr., and there was always somebody willing to work with him while waiting for him to prove himself insurable again. Ryder was much in demand when she was barely an adult because she was beautiful and unusual and willing to work, and a number of people who got their foot in the door of the industry that way learned to act as they went along. Ryder never did. A lot of these people were discarded by the industry as their looks faded; what's most special about Ryder, who at 37 is still very easy on the eyes, is that her looks held up just fine and still Hollywood was eager to discard her, because she showed no sign of ever learning to act a lick. She and Downey were both in Richard Linklater's rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly, and the amazing thing was how much of him came through even as a cartoon, while her improved-upon screen image had the same hollow shell behind it that it always had.

Maybe Ryder will get her comeback: stranger things have happened, and if it does, good for her. But it's annoying to see writers present her career as a story of a major talent that's been neglected or gone to waste, because such talk amounts to a slight of other, genuine talents. So many really gifted actresses have to fight harder for parts as they grow older, and some of them never really win a round. Given that, how is it anything but simple justice that Ryder should have trouble getting good roles when the salient fact of her career has been her failure to seem to grow up? All she had to offer the camera was her face, and if the general feeling in Hollywood is that that's not enough to compensate for the trouble she's apt to cause, keep in mind that she's less trouble than a lot of people who manage to keep themselves in work. And then there's the wildy gifted people who don't stay in the race at all. "If Ryder's artistic rehabilitation works out over the summer," Thorpe writes breathlessly, "she will have re-emerged at the age of 37 as one of the most impressive veterans of a 1980s Hollywood bratpack scene that has seen many casualties. An emblem of troubled, talented youth, Ryder was a sort of female equivalent to River Phoenix, but unlike him she has survived." If I read this correctly, in the comparison between Phoenix, whose career included some indelible performances before it was cut short, and Ryder, whose career doesn't and wasn't, Ryder wins because, for reasons connected to a fluke of mortality and blind luck, she's the one who's still employable. Seriously, does anyone really want to go there?

Related Stories: Screengrab Review: "Star Trek"--Nick's Take

Screengrab Review: "Star Trek"--Scott's Take

April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters Of All Time (Part Seven)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:45:00 GMT

BILL MURRAY AS JEFF SLATER IN TOOTSIE (1982)

Bill Murray is one of those people with such a long, varied career of starring and supporting roles in so many beloved mainstream and indie films -- from Carl Spackler in Caddyshack to “Bill Murray” in Coffee and Cigarettes -- that he could easily fill up this week’s list almost single-handedly. But of all his roles, his understated, largely improvised performance in Tootsie has always been my favorite: a toned-down version of his cocky '80s persona that hinted at the bemused, melancholy range of his later work, his Jeff Slater is the perfect roommate and wing-man: a wise, mellow pal who gently informs you when you’re "getting into a weird area" with your career or social life, yet who doesn’t scold or judge when he walks in to find you in a dress being groped by a horny old soap opera star. The yin to Dustin Hoffman’s neurotic actor yang, he’s the kind of playwright who’d prefer a half-empty theater filled with people who just came out of the rain to a packed house (and yet somehow doesn’t sound pretentious saying it). And best of all, I actually got to have a roommate very much like him once (hi, Hari!), during a year I still recall as fondly as my memories of Tootsie and the late, great Sydney Pollack. ("You were a tomato!") (AO)

MICHAEL KEATON AS BEETLEJUICE IN BEETLEJUICE (1988)

Keaton made this movie with the director Tim Burton at a time when Burton had more experience working with cartoon characters than live actors. It was a sweet gesture on Keaton's part to meet him more than halfway. At the time, Keaton was six years past his impressive movie debut in Night Shift (as a pimp who operated out of a morgue and preferred to be called a "love broker") and overdue to take his career to another level, but even those who guessed that he had untapped potential couldn't have guessed that maggoty would be such a great look for him. Few actors have turned themselves into a special effect with such happy results. (PN)

KEVIN KLINE AS OTTO WEST IN A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988)

It’s a testament to John Cleese’s generosity as a comic author that he gave the absolute best role in A Fish Called Wanda to someone else. That someone else was Kevin Kline, who, in a performance he’d never again equal, took the ball and ran with it: his grasp on the character of Otto West, a short-tempered, virile, violent, and not altogether bright criminal and Ugly American par excellence is vice-tight. The great thing about Otto is that he’s not a typical dumb goon: he’s a fairly skillful criminal, a stone cold killer, and best of all, he’s very slightly aware of how dumb he is. While most stupid characters milk comedy out of their obliviousness, the genius of Otto’s stupidity (and Kline’s astute assessment of same) is that he knows he’s not the brightest bulb on the marquee, and it drives him crazy. Hence his one great taboo – he can’t stand it when people call him stupid. What’s more, Kline milks gallons of comic frustration out of Otto’s inability to wrap his head around complex problems; he’s never angrier than when he senses someone has the advantage of him, but since he’s not smart enough to fake it, he just gets angrier (and stupider). One of the best throwaway gags in A Fish Called Wanda comes when an elaborate plan starts to go awry and Otto is called upon to help think of a solution; obviously infuriated, he pointlessly fires a couple of rounds from his silenced pistol into a steel safe and bellows “I’m THINKING!”. (LP)

STEVE ZAHN AS GLENN MICHAELS IN OUT OF SIGHT (1998)

Steve Zahn specializes in characters who have a negative genius for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; in That Thing You Do!, things got dramatic while he was off enjoying a rollercoaster ride. Here, he takes it so far that he barely seems to be in the right movie, though you're glad he stopped by. After arriving to help bust George Clooney out of prison -- a favor for which Clooney thanks him by threatening to throw his sunglasses "off the overpass while they're still on your head" -- he hooks up with Don Cheadle's mob just in time to participate in a massacre that soon has him sneaking around in search of the back exit. If all petty criminals were more like Zahn's Glenn, the world would be a much more entertaining place, and practically a crime-free one. (PN)

JEFF BRIDGES AS JEFFREY “THE DUDE” LEBOWSKI IN THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

Although he’s not the most clownish figure in the Coen Brothers’ endlessly quotable cult comedy – that title belongs to gun-toting, dog-sitting Vietnam vet Walter Sobchak, played with gusto by John Goodman – you’d be hard-pressed to find a figure more hilariously suited to the archetype of the Holy Fool than Jeff Bridges’ Dude. Conceived as a stoner upturning of Raymond Chandler’s hard-nosed detective Philip Marlowe, the Dude, a perpetually out-of-it former roadie whose life revolves around bowling, weed, and White Russians, is caught up in a web of mistaken identity, kidnapping and blackmail. While Marlowe stubbornly refused to be warned off a case, doggedly pursuing the truth for its own sake, the Dude barely even seems to be aware that he’s on a case, and yet, in his own shambolic, shaggy-dog way, has the instincts and aptitude of a real detective. Based on film promoter and ex-‘60s radical Jeff Dowd, the Dude is an immortal comic creation, a stumbling bum who outwits people more or less by default and lives in the sunshiney flipside of Los Angeles noir. His mind is never far from his next frame, and his dress sense isn’t quite tailored suits and ties, but let’s see Philip Marlowe disarm a rival simply by saying “Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.” (LP)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

WILL FERRELL AS RICKY BOBBY IN TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (2006)

Will Ferrell’s Anchorman may be more absurd, but Talladega Nights is still the SNL alum’s greatest big-screen achievement to date, a NASCAR-set bit of lunacy that mocks American culture while simultaneously exhibiting fondness for it. Via the character of Ricky Bobby, a nitwit car-racing star, Ferrell manages to send up our national gluttony and materialism, as well as Southern political and social conservatism, with a no-holds-barred goofiness that’s nonetheless underscored by affection for his redneck milieu and its inhabitants. To keep things evenhanded, Sacha Baron Cohen’s aggressively homosexual French F-1 champ Jean Girard provides a hilarious caricature of liberalism. It’s Ferrell’s titular clown, however, that truly embodies the film’s fair-minded attitude, his Ricky Bobby an egotistical good ol’ boy whose jingoism is as inane as his predilection for saying grace to the baby Jesus – an extended bit that gets funnier with every subsequent viewing – and yet whose me-first ridiculousness is laced with a childish kindness that makes him both an embarrassing and endearing personification of 21st century southern America. (NS)

CHEVY CHASE AS CLARK GRISWOLD IN CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989)

While the original remains the most popular, and European Vacation is probably the funniest, the Vacation series’ most heartwarming entry was 1989’s Yuletide saga, in large part because its holiday setting provided Chevy Chase with the best opportunities to convey not only Clark Griswold’s buffoonery, but to root that silliness in his deep, abiding love of family and tradition. In this second sequel, Clark’s homestead is invaded by parents, in-laws and the clan of Cousin Eddy (Randy Quaid), and this raft of supporting players – which also comes to include the Griswold’s prissy Yuppie neighbors (Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) – helps take some of the comedic burden off of Chase. Despite surrounding him with talented co-stars, however, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’s spotlight nonetheless remains squarely on its headliner, whose pratfall skills are in fine form, and whose sympathetic embodiment of his well-intentioned doofus patriarch – aggravated by his kin, disappointed over not receiving the work bonus he was counting on, and tormented by a squirrel let loose in his abode – lends the manic, messy proceedings real warmth. (NS)

PAUL REUBENS AS PEE-WEE HERMAN IN PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985)

Too much fun in a porn theater may have destroyed Paul Reubens' career – and, consequently, the life of his iconic Pee-Wee Herman character – but his 1985 big-screen debut, helmed by first-time director Tim Burton, stands up as a perfectly realized idiosyncratic original. In this fanciful, carnival-esque saga, Reubens' strange-talking man-child Pee-Wee embarks on a cross-country odyssey to recover his beloved red bike, which he believes was stolen by his rich, spoiled, nasty neighbor Francis (Mark Holton). Even on his first feature, Burton’s flair for crafting strange, wild, wondrous visions was in full effect, as was Danny Elfman’s aptitude for offbeat scores. Nonetheless, it’s Pee-Wee who cements his place in the film-comedy pantheon. From the colorful, gadgety confines of his home (where he chows down on some Mr. T breakfast cereal), to the Alamo (whose basement he foolishly hopes to investigate), to a roadside bar where he famously displays his dance moves while surrounded by a horde of nasty-looking bikers, Pee-Wee proves himself a one-of-a-kind weirdo whose irrepressible cheer is infectious, and whose childlike innocence is endearing. (NS)

ALBERT BROOKS AS ALBERT BROOKS IN REAL LIFE (1979)

Albert Brooks has built a career – and a pretty fine one, if you ask us – out of portraying himself as a complete jerkoff. Even when he’s not playing a fictional character who’s kind of a schmuck, he’s kind of a schmuck: the “Albert Brooks” he plays in his films is a rampaging egomaniac who’s completely oblivious to how he comes across to people. Nowhere is this better realized than in his first full-length feature as a writer and director, 1979’s Real Life. This criminally underseen comedy, which brilliantly anticipates the reality-TV craze of 20 years later, sees Brooks playing himself as a desperate-to-please filmmaker who decides to film a normal, average American family; the comedy lies in the fact that he quickly assesses that the moviegoing public will be bored stiff by normality and averageness, and immediately sets about interfering with their lives for entertainment value. Unsurprisingly, this ruins the experiment, and starts to ruin the family’s life as well – but right up until the very end (where he hits upon the brilliant idea of burning their house down in order to provide his disastrous movie with a suitably exciting ending), Brooks is completely blind to the fact that the only thing wrong with his movie is that he’s the one making it. “Albert Brooks”, as portrayed by Albert Brooks, is so fine a portrait of a self-absorbed Hollywood phony it must have made Robert Evans blush.

CHICO MARX AS BARAVELLI IN HORSE FEATHERS (1932)

Although we’ve chosen his role as Baravelli in the campus comedy Horse Feathers as representative, it’s really just a stand-in for any Chico Marx performance. In the Marx Brothers’ films, Groucho’s role was to be the anarchist, the fly in the ointment, the wild card who refused to play by society’s rules and hilariously wrecks the smooth running order of things; Chico’s role was to do the same thing – only to Groucho. Often stereotyped as the dimwitted punster, Chico’s roles went far deeper than that: he was a true comic foil to his younger brother, reminding him that he couldn’t always win, that there was always someone there who could outhustle even the great Groucho – even if it was by playing dumb. Groucho was the subversive riddle that brought down authority, and Harpo was the dynamite bomb thrown right in the middle of the room, but Chico was a Chinese finger puzzle: it looked so simple, but once you were caught in it, no matter how smart you were, you couldn’t get out. Nowhere is that more clear than in the famous “Tutti Frutti” scene in Horse Feathers, where a supremely confident Chico prevents a slow-burning Groucho from betting on the horse he wants to win. It’s one of the greatest examples of pure comic timing ever captured on film.

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

Contributors: Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

Morning Deal Report: Anne Hathaway Over the Rainbow

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Already set for an appearance in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Anne Hathaway will go over the rainbow in a Judy Garland biopic from the Weinstein Company. The movie will be based on Get Happy, a biography by Gerald Clarke, that “draws on numerous real-life sources to tell the life story of Garland, who began singing and acting as a toddler and continued doing so all the way through her premature death at the age of 47,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Nick Cassavettes will visit The Peaceable Kingdom for his next directorial project. “Story is based on the true life and work of Dame Daphne Sheldrick, the leading animal conservationist in Kenya, who has devoted her life to preventing elephant extinction by endeavoring to save baby elephants left orphaned by war, poaching and culling.”

“New Regency has acquired Freedom Formula: Ghost of the Wasteland, an adaptation of the Radical Publishing comicbook series that will be developed as a potential directing vehicle for Bryan Singer,” Variety reports. “The comicbook has a futuristic premise in which fighter jets have been replaced by pilots who battle in racing exo-suits.”

Related:
Anne Hathaway in Wonderland
Improving Moby Dick

Beatty vs. Tribune Syndicate: The Battle Over Dick Tracy

Phil Nugent — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Warren Beatty is being sued over the rights to Dick Tracy, the square-jawed supercop who was created by cartoonist Chester Gould in 1931. Beatty, who bought the rights to the character in 1985, has had some kind of Tracy obsession for much of his career; he used to talk about his lust to don the detective's yellow hat and two-way wrist radio in interviews going back to the 1960s, when talk of a movie based on a comic strip automatically inspired talk about Pop Art and the kind of jolly, mass-market camp typified by the Adam West Batman TV show. When Beatty finally got around to making 1990's Dick Tracy, the film was released in the shadow of Tim Burton's Batman, and Beatty, said by some to be nervous that he was no longer a box office draw for young audiences, consented to a publicity campaign geared around Madonna's role as a singing femme fatale. (In addition to starring as Tracy, Beatty both directed and produced that movie.) In recent years, Beatty has been heard to kick around the idea of doing Dick Tracy II or maybe a TV special, and in 2006 he took Tribune Media Services, which syndicates the comic strip, to court to establish that he still has the rights to the strip. The latest developments stem from Tribune's charges that if Beatty wants to grind out a TV show for no reason except to extend his claim to the rights to the character. The rights may revert to Tribune if the court decides that Beatty has let ten years lapse without making any "productive use" of them.

Gould, who retired from the strip in 1977 (it would be kept alive by other hands) and who died in 1985, apparently not upon hearing that his creation had fallen into the hands of Warren Beatty, created a distinctively flinty world, characterized by what the comics critic R. Fiore called an "unforgiving Calvinism", in which the grimly moralistic Tracy did whatever it took to bring a semblance of order to an urban landscape populated by dupes, saps, and brutish monsters whose misshapen souls had turned their features into Halloween masks. Such characters as the hit man Flattop Jones and the Nazi agent Pruneface might have taken their cues from Richard III's opening soliloquy: "Cheated of feature by dissembling nature/ Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time/ Into this breathing world, scarce half made up/ And that so lamely and unfashionable/ That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.../And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover/ To entertain these fair well-spoken days/ I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days." (The Screengrab: your one-stop on-line shop for comics rants and Shakespeare quotes.)

So far, no screen adaptation of the strip has really tapped into the fevered, hard-boiled nightmare quality of Gould's best early work, which after a long stretch out of print has recently begun reappearing in a series of hardcover volumes from IDW Publishing, beginning in 2006. (Volume 7, with Flattop on the cover, arrives late next month.) Republic Pictures, and later RKO, produced a string of Dick Tracy movies in the 1930s, most of which starred the colorless Ralph Byrd; in the 1960s, UPA produced a series of five-minute cartoons with Everett Sloane providing the voice of Tracy. These are best remembered for the supporting cast, a veritable United Nations of offensive ethnic stereotypes that included such worthies as Go-Go Gomez and Joe Jitsu. (These characters were voiced by Mel Blanc. I'd like to believe that he was high on something at the time.) The question of who may get to take the next crack at getting it right has recently taken on new significance with the bankruptcy of TMS's parent company, the Tribune Company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection late last year, while struggling under a debt load of some $13 billion. Having exclusive rights to Tracy again would be a major asset for a company that can't afford to be picky about where its next meal is coming from.

Precursors: Mars Attacks! (1996)

Nick Schager — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The answer to combating an alien invasion is misfit monsters in this week’s aptly titled Monsters vs. Aliens, a DreamWorks animated trifle that, for all its innocuous good humor, has little on Tim Burton’s screwy homage to ‘50s E.T. sagas, Mars Attacks! With more than a dash of Dr. Strangelove mixed into its silly period-sci-fi stew, Burton’s film concerns the unexpected arrival of spacemen intent on incinerating with ray-guns all of humanity – and cackling like little schoolchildren as they do it. The president (Jack Nicholson, in one of two roles) is at the head of a lunatic cabinet, a former heavyweight champ (Jim Brown) is determined to ditch his Egyptian-themed hotel gig and reunite with his wife (Pam Grier) and kids, and a Kansas teen (Lukas Haas) tasked with caring for granny winds up at the forefront of the interspecies fight, three of the many threads Burton casts with all-stars and crams into his overstuffed plot. Mars Attacks! isn’t often riotous but its postmodern use of ‘50s aesthetics in a clearly present day (circa 1996) setting proves both strangely natural and striking, as does its stabs at surreally wacko imagery, from the opening shot of cattle on fire running down a street, to the appearance of the Martians’ UFO armada. And while Burton’s satiric skewering is scattershot at best, the uninhibited madcap energy of his tribute-cum-big-budget-blockbuster nonetheless frequently makes it more amusing and inspired than that of the cheesy ‘50s B-movies (and bloated ‘90s summertime action-sagas) on which it deliriously riffs.

DVD Digest for March 10, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a handful of the most acclaimed films of 2008, and an animated classic gets released from the Disney vaults again.

This week’s selection of recent releases coming to DVD includes some of 2008’s best-reviewed films, including Sean Penn giving an Oscar-winning performance in Gus Van Sant’s Milk (Universal, also Blu-Ray), Anne Hathaway in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (Sony, also Blu-Ray) [the best film of the year, says I], Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (Disney), and the Swedish vampire chiller Let the Right One In (Magnolia). Also this week, Jason Statham in Transporter 3 (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), the real-life blues story Cadillac Records (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott in Role Models (Universal, also Blu-Ray), Charlize Theron in the WTO-centric ensemble piece Battle in Seattle (Universal, also Blu-Ray), and finally, one of the worst-received films of 2008, Mark Herman’s Holocaust-themed family movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Disney).

The big news in classic releases this week is the 70th Anniversary “Platinum Edition” of one of Disney’s greatest animated classics, Pinocchio. Also coming to Blu-Ray, the new DVD includes new commentary from Leonard Maltin and others, some newly-unearthed deleted scenes and storyboards, and a bunch of new features for kids and animation buffs alike. Also this week: Richard Gere and Edward Norton in Primal Fear Special Edition (Paramount, also Blu-Ray), and perhaps the least likely “classic” I’ve spotlighted to date, Howard the Duck Special Edition (Universal).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings South Park Season 12 (Paramount, also Blu-Ray) and The Starter Wife Season 1 (Universal).

Finally, the biggest Blu-Ray only release this week is Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner), which is great news if you don’t mind paying for two DVDs you’ll probably never watch just so you get DVDs of the Burton Batman movies. Also, where’s Mask of the Phantasm?

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It’s Watchmen Week here at The Screengrab as the greater Geek-iverse (and the studio executives who love it) await the opening of Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated, much low-expectations-generating adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ beloved, game-changing graphic novel about a bunch of asshole “super” “heroes” fighting crime, mental illness and erectile dysfunction in a scary alternate reality where Richard Nixon never went away. (And by the way, does everyone out there already know Silk Spectre II: Electric Boogaloo is portrayed by the same actress who played Valerie Cherish’s little blonde protégé on The Comeback? I just found that out, like, yesterday and was momentarily confused because I thought all the Watchmen were supposed to be kinda middle-aged -- but then I checked the Internet Movie Database and, much to my surprise, Malin Akerman’s actually 31, which is somewhat middle-aged, I suppose)...

Anyway, our own Scott Von Doviak and Paul Clark have already weighed in with their reviews of Hollywood’s latest attempt to wring a little KA-CHING! out of the POW! ZAP! BAM! of the funny book aisle, a strategy that’s been serving the Suits pretty well in recent years. I could pontificate here on the way America’s fascination with caped crusaders panders to infantile, imperialist empowerment fantasies, crowding more intelligent, adult material from the multiplex...but not only would that be annoying, it would also be hypocritical, since (A) I like a good funny book movie as much the next geek, (B) another movie about masked superheroes battling supervillains is a helluva lot better than another movie about masked sadists chopping up teenagers and (C) I keep hoping they’ll someday finally make that Wonder Woman movie I’ve been waiting for since I was 12. Mmm...magic lasso...

In the meantime, though, please enjoy the following list from Nerve.com’s very own Legion of Doom as we salute truth, justice, the American way and THE BEST AND WORST COMIC BOOK MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

The Best:

IRON MAN (2008)

True, it’s only been a few weeks since I wrote about Jon Favreau’s rock ‘em sock ‘em revival of the venerable Marvel Comics rust magnet for my Best of 2008 list...but (unlike certain awards-distributing Academies I could mention), I wanted to make sure this excellent film was recognized among the best of the best!

V FOR VENDETTA (2006)

Don't tell Alan Moore, who has never seen it but took the trouble to bad-mouth it anyway, but this adaptation of his Thatcher-era anarchists' fable, directed by Wachowski brothers proxy James McTeigue, does better than pretty good by its source material. The most important changes the filmmakers made from the original text, notably the transformation of Eve's (Natalie Portman) blokey boyfriend into a sardonic gay TV host played by Stephen Fry, actually work well: Fry's performance gives the film some heart, and film is clearly better suited than the printed page when it comes to paying gratuitous tribute to Benny Hill. The movie even inspired David Denby to apoplexy by seeming to present a terrorist as a political hero. Annoying David Denby is always a public service.

HULK (2003)

Remember how last year’s Edward Norton re-boot of The Incredible Hulk was going to prove that the relatively disappointing box office take of the 2003 Hulk was all Ang Lee’s fault? That audiences would embrace a louder, faster, dumber Hulk movie in a way they never did Lee’s artsy-fartsy one? How’s that working out for ya? The 2008 edition racked up almost exactly the same box office total as the 2003, so maybe it’s just that nobody likes poor ol’ Hulk. Or maybe the 2003 version wasn’t so bad after all, which is what I’ve been saying all along. Yes, it has its flaws; Eric Bana doesn’t exactly light up the screen, the CGI star isn’t quite up to snuff in some scenes, and things do take a little longer to get percolating than was perhaps necessary. But Lee brings a lyrical, haunting tone to the picture that may seem at odds with the whole “HULK SMASH!” ethos, but actually taps into a vein of melancholy the character has always possessed. The innovative editing scheme, with its cascade of digital wipes and split screens, is a far more clever and entertaining cinematic analog to reading a comic than anything Zack Snyder does in Watchmen, and the CGI effects do mesmerize at times. Hell, I could have watched this Hulk bouncing his way across the desert for hours.

X-MEN 2 (2003)

Ushering in the modern age of Marvel superhero films, Bryan Singer’s X-Men helped prove that the sight of men in tights – or, in this case, men and women in leather body suits – didn’t have to doom a comic adaptation to cartoonishness. It was Singer’s 2003 sequel, however, that truly elevated the genre by cannily marrying romantic drama, vigorous action and social-intolerance subtexts (here reconfigured from the source material to address sexuality more than race). Aside from Halle Berry’s still-awful wig and Alan Cumming’s grating Nightcrawler, X2 is sharper, smarter and more exhilarating than its predecessor, remaining true to the spirit of its heroes, villains and Dark Phoenix-ish storyline, buoyed by Brian Cox’s superbly villainous William Stryker, and smartly placing as high a premium on character as on spectacle. Which isn’t, however, to say that the spectacle itself isn’t reason enough to check out Singer’s sequel, since an early Stryker-led attack on Professor Xavier’s school, as well as Wolverine’s climactic throwdown with Lady Deathstrike, more than ably deliver the super-skirmish goods.

BATMAN (1989)

A genuine pop culture behemoth in the summer of '89, Tim Burton's blockbuster comic book movie probably did more than any other to make comics adaptations an accepted Hollywood genre, if only for proving that the success of the first couple of Superman movies hadn't been a fluke. This is not one of those accomplishments that nobody can see a downside to, and despite its hellacious popularity, the movie has always had enough attackers to count as controversial, including those who think it's a clumsy piece of storytelling to comics geeks (including Kevin Smith) who think it blasphemed its source material in any number of ways. But Burton's graphic sense and gothic sense of humor always made it a striking, strikingly funny piece of work, and facts are facts: no actor has ever been more compelling or convincingly haunted in a superhero role than Michael Keaton. The passage of twenty years and umpteen sequels and reboots (including Burton and Keaton's deeply flawed but often lovely Batman Returns) has thrown its defects and pluses into sharp relief: it's hard to remember that, in 1989, when Christopher Nolan was all of nineteen years old, many critics were appalled because they thought this picture was too dark.

SUPERMAN II (1980)

The 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman was an outlier, and probably the earliest example of filmmakers at least trying to make a genuinely good superhero movie. But it wasn’t entirely successful, and one sticking point for a lot of fans was the performance as Lex Luthor by Gene Hackman. The role has as many passionate defenders as detractors, but many thought that it was overly campy and unserious, and a superhero movie is generally only as good as its villain. The 1980 sequel would change all that. Introducing three Kryptonian supervillains escaped from the Phantom Zone – the hulking Non, the ice-cold Ursa, and best of all, the fantastic Terence Stamp as the megalomaniacal General Zod – Superman II gave us villains for the ages, and culminated in one of the most exciting fight scenes we’d seen to date. But it still wasn’t a great movie, and longstanding rumor placed the blame on the firing, when production was nearly complete, of Superman director Richard Donner and his replacement with Richard Lester. Lester, while a talented director, didn’t much care about the job and had little affection for the material, and the results are right there on screen. A few years ago, however, the Richard Donner cut was released commercially, and it finally became clear how good Superman II could have been if its original director had been allowed to pursue his vision all along.

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

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

Trailer: 9

Paul Clark — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

A few years ago, I saw Shane Acker’s original animated short 9 as part of one of Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt’s Animation Show programs and was mightily impressed. Rather than aping the look of sci-fi benchmarks like Blade Runner or the style of anime, Acker and his animation team created a unique futuristic vision. But while I’m curious to see whether Acker, now backed by Tim Burton and Wanted’s Timur Bekmambetov, I’m not all that thrilled with this first trailer. Rather than really drawing the audience into the world Acker has created, the folks who cut this trailer together have instead thrown together a montage of images, with plenty of explosions and brief peeks at the characters who drive the story. Don’t get me wrong- I’m still looking forward to Acker’s feature. I’m just not sure Hollywood knows what to do with it.

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Ho! And also, ho-ho! Happy Festivus from all of us here at The Screengrab!

Last week, we shared some of our favorite cinematic comebacks of all time, but today the gifts we're really hoping to get are the following COMEBACKS WE'D MOST LIKE TO SEE IN 2009, starting with...

MARISA TOMEI

Is it generally accepted that Tomei is as good as she is? She won an Academy Award for her supporting performance in 1992's My Cousin Vinny, but, as also happened with Mira Sorvino (who was ridiculed for having won an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite) and Jennifer Tilly (who was teased just for having been nominated for Bullets Over Broadway), that achievement inspired some snickering from people who don't understand why you'd waste an award on someone in a comedy. Never mind that Tomei's performance in that movie, which gave audiences as much sheer pleasure as anything run through a projector that year, couldn't have been easy to pull off, or that it summed up as well as anything else she's done what a remarkable combination of brains and adorability she has as an actress. Devoted to working in the theater, and not averse to doing TV when the role is right, she takes long breaks between movie jobs, though she keeps her hand in enough that nobody refers to The Wrestler as her comeback picture. But only for a brief time, in the wake of her Oscar win, did she inspire filmmakers to place her at the center of a few starring vehicles (Untamed Heart, Only You, The Family Perez). From Vinny to In the Bedroom to last year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to The Wrestler, the bulk of her most striking movie work has consisted of supporting roles in which her character was defined by her relationship to a man who had more lines and more screen time. And almost any time when Tomei is in a movie but not onscreen counts as wasted time.

MICHAEL KEATON

Does Keaton have issues? As an actor, he's come an incredibly long way from his screen debut in Night Shift, where he was still basically doing stand-up comedy in character -- but ever since hanging up his Bat cape and apparently losing Tim Burton's contact information, he's bounced from role to role, seldom betraying any sign that he cares about sustaining a viable career. He did reportedly beg for his role in Jackie Brown, though he left less impact on the finished film than he did when, as a gag, he reprised the character for a surprise cameo in Out of Sight. He gave a startling performance as a genius-level sociopathic criminal in Desperate Measures, but the downside is that he gave it in Desperate Measures. He may just be a man with more talent than taste, but given his background, it is suprising that he doesn't attempt more comedies; maybe he felt stung after the commercial failure of the 1996 Multiplicity, an underrated film in which he played multiple roles and worked like a saint to keep all the movie's balls in the air. Still,everything you'd guess about him from his acting seems designed to make you wonder why he'd want to appear in Herbie: Fully Loaded or be reincarnated as a snowman in Jack Frost: how hard up can he be for ways to impress his kids? Some of his recent films went all but unreleased (including The Merry Gentlemen, which he directed), but he gave one of his best performances last year on TV, in the cable miniseries The Company, where his legendary CIA brainmaster James Jesus Angleton gave you the feeling that decades of American history were decided by the icy paranoia of a few quietly deranged men in dark rooms. He also famously dropped out of the TV series Lost after learning that the producers had changed their minds about killing off his character in the pilot episode. The one thing that's plain and clear about Keaton is that he's a restless man whose reluctant to settle for the obvious, even if he'd rather star in White Noise than be idle while waiting for his next chance to shake up the Richter scale in a meaningful way. Some young hotshot director who's looking to make waves should plug himself into Keaton's aura and see what happens.

KELLY LYNCH

Lynch is regally beautiful enough, and capable of summoning up enough style and attitude, that you might be tempted to describe her as the sane equivalent of Sharon Stone, if that didn't undervalue her acting range: though she ought to be a movie star, Lynch is also actress enough to pass for a normal human being. For all practical purposes, her movie career really begin with Drugstore Cowboy, where as Diane, the drug-fiend housewife, she burned holes in the screen with her level gaze until exiting the picture with her vulnerabilities finally exposed, a thoroughbred on shaky legs. So far as good movies go, that was pretty much the end of her career, too, though she's continued to give solidly crafted, emotionally rich performances in all manner of dreck, from the "ooh, edgy!" 1993 romantic comedy Three of Hearts, in which she yearned for fellow M.I.A. Sherilyn Fenn, to the 2005 head trip The Jacket, where she gave Adrien Brody more reason than usual to have the shivers. Her chops are formidable and she clearly loves a challenge, and trying to keep her dignity and earn her paycheck in Mr. Magoo clearly counts as a challenge. But she probably deserves better. I know those of us who are her fans do.

SUZY AMIS

Amis has a face that, at least when it's filtered through the lenses of the cameras that love her unconditionally, could make you forget about everything else in the world if your hair was on fire. As an actress, she invariably communicates warmth and sweetness, but she can dredge up subterranean feelings of anger and pain when she needs to. Rolling Stone gave her its vote as the Next Big Thing actress back in the late 1980s, and in little seen indie fare such as Rocket Gibralter, Watch It, and Michael Almereyada's Twister and Nadja, as well as bigger-budget but well-hidden films such as John Boorman's Where the Heart Is and Bruce Beresford's Rich in Love, she delivered everything a movie "It girl" could deliver but the box office success. One of her rare starring vehicles, The Ballad of Little Jo, developed a small cult following after it was smuggled onto cable TV, though perhaps the most stunning evidence of how much she could give a movie came with the 1993 two-character filmed play Two Small Bodies, a weird take on the Alice Crimmins case kept on life support by Amis and her co-star Fred Ward, who probably deserves his own entry on this list. She finally got to be in a hit in 1995 when she was tapped to supply the token amount of estrogen to the cast of The Usual Suspects, a movie where the late-arriving news that her character has been murdered off-screen hits the viewer like a lead weight hitting one's foot. But then she took on a nothing role in James Cameron's Titanic, and she and Cameron (who at the time was married to his fourth wife and Terminator leading lady, Linda Hamilton) had an affair -- then the next thing you know, Cameron's divorce was final and the two of them were getting married, and she hasn't worked since, just as Hamilton was out of circulation while she and Cameron were married. I look forward to the day that James Cameron meets his future sixth wife the way some people look forward to getting their hands on their 401k.

ELIZABETH PENA

In the mid-1980s, in such movies as Down and Out in Beverly Hills, La Bamba, and Jacob's Ladder, Pena established herself as a pouty, steamy cuddlebug, but one whose pout concealed teeth that could bite: her expression of disgust when looking at the macho moron she married in La Bamba leaves a stronger visual memory than the happy romantic scenes of Lou Diamond Phillips' Richie Valens courting his unruffled blonde kewpie doll Donna. As a post-ingenue actress, Pena had her highest-profile role in John Sayles' Lone Star, sitting on a car hood with Chris Cooper, trying to process the information that their love was not meant to be, big time. She can currently be seen in the ensemble cast of the family comedy Nothing Like the Holidays, physically a little puffier-looking but with banked fires still smoldering behind her eyes. Someone needs to provide her with a canvass broad enough to let those fires flame out.

Click Here For Part Two, Three & Four

Contributor: Phil Nugent

Trailer Review: Coraline

Paul Clark — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

After The Nightmare Before Christmas, I had high hopes for the career of its director, Henry Selick. But while producer Tim Burton has continued to be one of Hollywood’s most distinctive and bankable filmmakers, Selick’s career has foundered, producing only two features since then- 1996’s middling James and the Giant Peach and the 2001 flop Monkeybone. Finally, with Coraline, his first new feature in eight years, Selick appears to be back in track. Basing his project on Neil Gaiman’s beloved fantasy book surely helps, supplying the creative backbone for the film in a way that not even James, itself based on a children’s book, did. Yet it’s Selick’s bravura stop-motion animation that comes through most clearly in this trailer, with bravura flights of fancy that surely needed computer assistance but which nonetheless look to be fully integrated into the old-school effects. Plus, it’s hard not to love a family movie in which Ian McShane and John Hodgman provide voices. All in all, this should be one of the more satisfying movies of early 2009.

Yesterday's Hits: Home Alone (1990, Chris Columbus)

Paul Clark — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The 1990 holiday movie slate boasted a number of sure-fire hits from many of Hollywood’s most bankable names. Arnold Schwarzenegger was getting pushed around by a classroom full of kids, Sylvester Stallone was revisiting his most iconic character once again, Tim Burton was debuting his first project after Batman made him Hollywood’s hottest young director, and Kevin Costner premiered his debut behind the camera, an epic Western that went on to win several Oscars. Heck, there was even a new Godfather movie. Yet none of these movies went on to become the year’s top grossing blockbuster. No, the reigning king of 1990’s box office boasted little more than a precocious child star, a kid-friendly concept, and a memorable scream.

That movie, of course, was Home Alone, directed by Chris Columbus. Sold to moviegoers with the tagline, “a family comedy… without the family,” the movie’s premise encompassed every kid’s dream- having the run of the house with no adult supervision- and many parents’ nightmare- accidentally leaving their child behind when they leave on vacation. At the center of the action was Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, for whom producer/screenwriter John Hughes specifically wrote the role after previously working with him on the previous year’s Uncle Buck. Expectations for Home Alone were relatively low, but good word of mouth about the film and its young star made it the runaway hit of the season, and its overwhelming success led to two sequels.

Alas, Home Alone doesn’t hold up very well, in part because of the mountain of contrivances the movie asks us to accept in order to make the storyline work. To begin with, although I’m sure that children have been accidentally left behind by their parents, it’s hard to believe that it would happen the way it does in the movie- surely one of the adults in the house was an early riser, no? Likewise, a repeated gag involving characters being fooled into thinking that a violent-sounding movie scene is really happening in the house is kind of a forehead-slapper- like any reasonably intelligent adult couldn’t tell the difference between real gunshots to those playing on a television?

But then, intelligence seems to be in short supply among the characters. One of my cinematic pet peeves is when a movie requires that its characters be idiots and Home Alone has some real doozies. Chief among the movie’s morons are Harry and Marv, a pair of bumbling burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Here’s a pair so thickheaded that they get all manner of indignities vested upon them by a little kid, yet never think that, hey, maybe it’d be best to just cut their losses and run rather than risk incurring still more pain and suffering. Of course, it helps that Kevin is preternaturally at jerry-rigging booby traps all over the house with relatively little preparation, and placing them just where the crooks will strike.

This is indicative of the movie’s biggest problem, then Kevin is almost never convincing as a real kid. Oh sure, Culkin bugs his eyes out real cute and delivers the wiseassed one-liners almost like he means them. But it’s just hard to believe that Kevin would be capable of most of what he does or says, whether he’s delivering a monologue in the bathroom mirror or faking out the baddies. Part of the blame must fall on Culkin himself. Like most child actors, Culkin has self-assurance in spades but can’t sell the dialogue as his own, especially not when he’s given lines like “Bless this highly nutritious microwavable macaroni and cheese dinner and the people who sold it on sale. Amen.” Culkin was the biggest child star of his day, making $8 million a movie at the peak of his popularity, but it’s easy to see why he hasn’t been able to make the leap to grown-up roles with the same success that contemporaries like Elijah Wood have.

Time and again, I’ve bemoaned the tendency of many adults to forgive family movies their faults and manipulations on the grounds that they’re “just for kids.” While I realize that children aren’t particularly discerning movie watchers, it doesn’t seem right to use this as an excuse to foist subpar entertainment upon them. Home Alone might have been a hit in its day, but it’s also manipulative and often stupid, and making children watch movies like this is practically an insult to their budding intelligence. With all the high-quality family movies now available on DVD, there’s really no reason to show your kids Home Alone.

Screengrab Presents: The Best Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Of All Time (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

DEATHTRAP (1982)

One set, five characters, a couple of twists and a few good, juicy murders: that’s the formula for success in Ira Levin’s puzzle box of a murder mystery about a struggling veteran playwright desperate for a hit. Add a nervous spouse with a weak heart, a gay lover, a weird psychic, a cagey agent and a wall full of handcuffs, pistols and crossbows and you’ve got one of the few stage plays with the power to make audiences scream and jump like a creature double-feature. The movie version wisely sticks to the basics, letting the cat-and-mouse triple-double-cross plotting speak for itself while sticking mostly to the confined but never claustrophobic Long Island home of the plotting protagonist (Michael Caine at his very Michael Caine-iest, having a helluva time). And though certain naysayers here at the Screengrab may say nay, I also give kudos to Christopher Reeve’s performance in the film, which tweaks his goody-two-shoes Superman image while letting him exercise the underutilized mischievous side of his (admittedly limited) range. Meanwhile, Dyan Cannon gives good scream as the wife, and if all that doesn’t win you over, the movie has at least one immortal line, delivered by a snarky critic (Joel Siegel) after Caine’s playwright Sidney Bruhl premieres a hackneyed whodunit nowhere near as clever as Deathtrap: “I'll tell you who done it. Sidney Bruhl done it. And he done it in public."

THE RULING CLASS (1972)

Adapted for the screen by Peter Barnes from his own deeply subversive play, The Ruling Class was sort of a last gasp for the British “Angry Young Man” movement. But its demise was also its salvation: the play – and the subsequent and very successful film – kept in place the elements of class warfare, generational conflict and family drama and turned them on their heads. It replaced rage with whimsy, a tone of rebellion with a sense of absurdity, and an overall tone of Pythonesque lunacy that proved the movement wasn’t entirely devoid of humor. The story of an upper-class family of British aristocrats forced by fortune into restoring as its head a deranged son who thinks he’s the second coming of Christ (played with delightfully silky craziness by Peter O’Toole, in one of his greatest roles), The Ruling Class is, even today, as vicious as it is hilarious. It expands on the play by adding a few memorable characters and trading up in the players (most especially Nigel Green as McKyle, “the Electric Christ”, and the unforgettable Alastair Sim as the bewildered Bishop Bertie Lampton) as well as taking the sets out-of-doors, but what made the stage version so great was its devastatingly funny and fiendish dialogue. Barnes and director Peter Medak are wise enough not to change a bit of that.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

Tim Burton’s first full-blown attempt at a musical is so successful, it’s a wonder that he never tried it before. Without sacrificing the elements that have made him famous – the gloomy atmospherics, the high gothic sensibilities, the manic pace, the deft blend of dark humor and absurd violence – his big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s notorious musical gives him the perfect format. Why? Because musicals are infinitely forgiving of the qualities that, in many of Burton’s other films, can rightly be considered weaknesses: his overblown dialogue, his clumsy grasp of the dynamics of storytelling, his slight characterization, and his love of style over emotional substance. Everything really comes together for him here, and the result is one of the most enjoyable musicals in decades. Dismissals of the lead actors (Johnny Depp as the vengeance-addled Victorian hairstylist and Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter, as the vendor of unhygienic meat pies) as unable to sing at the level expected from a big-screen musical somewhat miss the point: Sweeney Todd is a fiendishly difficult production, its songs and structure much more akin to an opera than a musical comedy, and it contains precious few toe-tappers, so putting the words in the mouths of those not well-suited to the old school of musicals doesn’t sink it one bit.

INHERIT THE WIND (1960)

Almost fifty years down the road, there are a lot of problems with the Stanley Kramer adaptation of the then-controversial play (by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, no relation) about the Scopes Monkey Trial. It’s excessively stagey; Kramer doesn’t bother to open up the set very much, and too many scenes are given no chance to work in the very different medium of film. The casting is problematic; Spencer Tracy and Frederic March are terrific in the lead roles (as stand-ins for Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, respectively), and there are some good supporting jobs, especially by Elliott Reed as the county prosecutor, but Dick York and Donna Anderson as the romantic leads are flat as pancakes, and Gene Kelly playing a thinly-veiled H.L. Mencken is one of the biggest botch-jobs in casting history. It’s unfair, imbalanced, and historically inaccurate. And in a certain sense, it’s simply not as relevant as it once was; Inherit the Wind isn’t about what it’s about, but rather a Cold War narrative about the long-faded dangers of McCarthyism. But there are still some gorgeous speeches in this moldy oldie, and since America is, astonishingly, still debating the rightness of teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools some eighty-odd years after the Scopes Trial, it maintains a relevance its authors couldn’t possibly have anticipated.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

While many directors attempt to open up adaptations of stage plays for the big screen by taking the action up and out, Mike Nichols helps make Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a masterpiece by doing the opposite. Although he does take us outside once or twice, what makes the film so visually arresting is his camera’s perfect pace with the legendary dialogue: instead of going out, it circles endlessly in and around, like a shark. It darts in and out of scenes, whirls around like the heads of the characters after a stinging rejoinder, and creeps in for powerful closeups that reveal faces as ugly as the words they’re speaking. Who exactly gets credit for the screenplay has been the subject of endless disputes, arguments and lawsuits, but really, it’s as simple as going to the source; almost all of the hypnotic dialogue that takes place between timid, repressed college professor Richard Burton and his domineering, disapproving wife Elizabeth Taylor is present in Edward Albee’s original stage play. Not for nothing is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a sort of literary shorthand for viciously feuding married couples: as Burton and Taylor go for each other’s throats, the camera matches them slash for slash, portraying a couple so sick of each other – but so used to each other – that the object of their hatred fills their eyes and becomes all that they can see.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: "The Nightmare Before Christmas"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:20:00 GMT

If you are anything like me -- and why wouldn't you be? -- you're a sucker for Christmas. The arbitrary yet somehow natural-seeming traditions; the carols which somehow only sound right when you've got just enough bourbon-fortified eggnog in you; the extra days off from work; the fact that people give you free stuff wrapped in shiny paper; the way everyone pretends to be nice to each other for a change: what's not to like? It's also one of those Western cultural touchstones so universal (suck it, Judaism!) that pretty much everybody gets into the act; despite the bogus claims from pouty conservatives about a "war on Christmas", the birth of Baby Jesus is still commemorated on almost every TV show on the air, and Yuletide is second only to summer as a Hollywood high holy day.

So, in the spirit of this year's Summerfest series -- where I lazily Netflixed a dozen or so movies with "summer" in the title and reviewed them so you'd know what to watch while the pool guy skimmed the drowned crow out of your Jacuzzi -- I present the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon, where I get drunk and watch some of the finest Christmas movies that Hollywood has crammed down our throats, and ask: will this movie fill you with holiday cheer or seasonal depression?

First up is 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D, although a more accurate name for it would be Not Actually Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas or even Hi Everybody We're Henry Selick and Caroline Thompson and We Directed and Wrote This Movie Respectively And What Do We Have To Do To Get a Little Credit For That?'s The Nightmare Before Christmas. While Burton created the lead characters and wrote a poem that served as the movie's inspiration, he had very little to do with making the film itself, and the fact that he's generally given all the kudos for it is a shame, because if nothing else, it proves how other people are capable of taking his quirky, creepy aesthetic and running with it.

Made using a daring, innovating, and highly striking form of 3-D animation, The Nightmare Before Christmas uses the clever (and somewhat underexplored) notion that all holidays are represented geographically in an otherworldly tableau to tell the story of Halloween bigwig Jack Skellington -- voiced by Chris Sarandon, with song vocals by the film's composer, Burton stalwart Danny Elfman. Jack happens upon the existence of Christmastown, and, meaning well but flummoxed -- and slightly jealous -- of the universal love showered on its big shot, one "Sandy Claws", resolves to cut in on his action. Hilarity ensues, lessons are learned, and all that standard Christmassy crap, but filtered through a truly weird visual sensibility.

One thing that director Selick and screenwriter Thompson share with Tim Burton is a sort of whimsical disregard for the conventions of storytelling. Setpieces ramble one to the other, and the story rolls gregariously along without ever making a lot of sense -- you get the idea that the filmmakers were as impatient as some of their younger audience to get on to the next bit of cool stuff. That said, the movie is breathtakingly gorgeous, with incredibly clever and intricate visuals that took as much time and effort as the story didn't. (There's currently an exhibit of some of the models used in the film on display at an art museum here in San Antonio, where I live, and seeing them up close, you get an unexpected sense of how elaborate and careful the building of them was; it's clearly no accident the movie looks as good as it does.) Kids old enough not to be freaked out by some of the jarring elements of the movie will adore its highly successful visual style, which blends cute and creepy in a way rarely seen outside of Japanese animation, and adults will be engaged by the swell performances and the overall intricacy of the movie's design.

Despite the Halloweeny themes and the often shocking visual play, there's really nothing gloomy or depressing about The Nightmare Before Christmas; it's an old-fashioned entertaining all-ages romp like rarely gets made any more, and the songs, while not exactly unforgettable, are loads of fun while you're experiencing them, especially "The Oogie Boogie Song", a monster's rollicking threat towards a kidnapped Santa Claus. In contrast to Burton's own weepy-assed Christmas effort, Edward Scissorhands, the only bummer to be found is that some of the great talents on display in the voice cast -- including Paul Reubens, Catherine O'Hara, and Glenn Shadix -- don't get nearly as much work as their talent deserves.

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS RATING: A solid 8 Maids a-Milking. The story and the script won't stay with you past Christmas morning, but it's a pure good time you can sing along to after you've gotten deep in the punch bowl Christmas Eve -- and you won't even have to chase the kids out of the living room.

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Summerfest '08: Wet Hot American Summer

Screengrab Salutes: The Top Biopics Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The problem with biopics, as most cineastes know, is the way they often tend to play like a greatest hits of their subjects’ lives, packed with historical moments and celebrity impersonations rather than realistic character development or any kind of specific story worth telling.

But Gus Van Sant’s Milk vaulted out of the specialty box office charts and into the mainstream top ten largely on the strength of a gripping, inspirational (and, sadly, still timely) story of persecution, triumph and tragedy, featuring a classic protagonist/antagonist duo embodied by Sean Penn’s crusading gay rights activist and Josh Brolin’s conflicted assassin.

And so, with Oscar buzz clinging to Van Sant, Penn and Brolin like...wait for it...yes, milk mustachios, we here at the Screengrab decided now would be the perfect time to Walk Hard through the positively true story of OUR FAVORITE BIOPICS OF ALL TIME!

ED WOOD (1994)

Tim Burton’s tribute to the so-called “worst director of all time” is a two-fer: while Johnny Depp’s relatively obscure title character is the focus, the Oscar-winning main attraction was Martin Landau’s portrayal of a lusty, foul-mouthed, morphine-addicted Bela Lugosi in the final years of his life, after Hollywood had kicked him to the curb and the once proud actor could only find work rolling around in a lake with a giant rubber octopus. Lugosi’s son, Béla Junior, initially criticized Burton’s film for its inaccuracies with regard to his father (who, for example, was married at the time of his death and rarely used profanity, at least according to friends like Forrest J. Ackerman, Ed Wood’s one-time “illiterary” agent). But what makes the film great is that docu-drama realism was never the point: we don’t necessarily see events as they happened, but rather the way Ed Wood, Jr. (and, to a certain extent, Wood biographer Rudolph Grey and cartoonist/old Hollywood enthusiast Drew Friedman) perceived them: in surreal, melodramatic black & white fantasias where an alcoholic transvestite wannabe could actually transcend death and live forever like his idol, Count Dracula.

I'M NOT THERE (2007)

If ever there was an artist who required no further mythologizing, it would have to be Bob Dylan. A conventional biopic of the Bard might well be unbearable, which is why it's a good thing Todd Haynes, World's Cleverest Film Student, signed on for the task. Haynes takes the well-known Dylan mythos, scrambles it all together and then bounces it off a series of funhouse mirrors, delighting in the ever more distorted reflections that result. Six different actors play six different versions of Dylan, among them Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), an 11-year-old African-American boy who rides the rails with hobos, spinning tall tales of a rambling youth with no direction home; Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), an alternate universe troubadour whose Dylanesque career unfolds as scenes from a mockumentary in the mode of A Mighty Wind; and Robbie (Heath Ledger), an actor who is playing Jack Rollins in a conventional biopic called Grain of Sand. (Sample dialogue: "I'm only a pawn in their game!") The standout is Cate Blanchett, who was nominated for an Oscar for her eerie take on hipster-dandy Jude Quinn, supernova post-Beatles pop star. In appropriating and manipulating various filmmaking styles, Haynes is striving for a cinematic equivalent to the way Dylan adapted and exploded traditional folk forms in his music. The resulting surreal swirl recalls Dylan's most fertile creative period, his mid-60s "thin, wild mercury music" wherein characters ranging from Paul Revere to Jack the Ripper to Cecil B. DeMille could inhabit the same soundscape. Through these methods, Haynes is attempting a biography not so much of a man, but of an artistic sensibility. If I'm Not There is occasionally impenetrable, pretentious or overly impressed with its own cleverness, that only serves to make it a more accurate, warts-and-all portrait, without delving into tabloid trash. You may love it or hate it, but you get the feeling its subject wouldn't want it any other way.

LADY SINGS THE BLUES (1972)

This soapy treatment of the life of Billie Holiday is not beloved by jazz critics or historical purists, who recoil from its sloppy handling of the facts of the singer's life and gag on Diana Ross' pop stylings when she sings Holiday classics such as "Strange Fruit." But the movie remains highly enjoyable when taken on the terms that it set for itself in 1972: a chance for African-American audiences to wallow in the kind of old-Hollywood melodrama that had been spun from the lives of white celebrities such as Lillian Roth and Ruth Etting, with a dash of blaxploitation attitude for flavor. (It turns out that Billie needed a toxically blond white man to turn her onto heroin. Who knew?) Ross' singing here takes a back seat to her acting, which should have marked the start of a major movie career. She proved she had the talent, but once she'd tasted success in Hollywood, her diva gene ate her common sense alive. Her scenes with her piano man sidekick, Richard Pryor, have a special poignance today, because it's hard to remember that there was a time when Diana Ross and Richard Pryor occupied the same planet.

GENTLEMAN JIM (1942)

This affably sanitized life of heavyweight boxer James J. Corbett (Errol Flynn) is probably the most entertaining example of the boxer-biopic genre that Martin Scorsese was to bury for all time with Raging Bull. It also provided its star, Errol Flynn, with a rare chance to appear onscreen in street clothes instead of leggings or cowboy gear. The premise is that Corbett was the first brainiac who conquered his opponents by means of the "scientific" method, which enables him to whup such swaggering sides of beef as John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond). This allows Flynn to win his fights and still display a glib enough tongue to pitch woo at society gal Alexis Smith. This is also the movie that was in theaters when Flynn was dragged into court on hinky charges of statutory rape, a sideshow that turned out to do the movie not the least bit of harm at the box office.

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993)

In this updating of Love Me or Leave Me (the 1955 cult classic in which Doris Day, as singer Ruth Etting, was physically abused by James Cagney as her husband-manager), Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne play Ike and Tina Turner, from their days starting out together on the R & B touring circuit and the period when electrifying star performances on-stage alternated with one-sided sparring matches backstage to the day that Tina, having discovered the untapped strength at her core with the help of a chanting regimen, starting punching back. The closest thing to a flaw in Bassett's performance is that she didn't have Turner's legs, a problem that today would probably be corrected with the help of CGI; she compensates with her slugger's arms, which make the scenes of abuse easier to get through, since you can't help but anticipate the moment when this woman realizes that she can take care of herself. Fishburne may be even better, tapping into deep reserves of rage that a lesser actor would have been tempted to take out on the costume designer. This is probably the finest lead performance ever given by an actor who at one point is forced to don hot pants and a Prince Valiant haircut.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

OST: "Beetlejuice"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:45:00 GMT

Danny Elfman's reputation as a film composer, to put it politely, is mixed. To put it not so politely, there are a lot of people who think he sucks. Though Elfman himself -- a multiple Oscar nominee, a millionaire many times over, and Mr. Bridget Fonda -- probably doesn't pay his detractors any mind, there is a growing consensus that the man who started out as the most unlikely person to achieve success as a composer of scores for blockbuster Hollywood films has turned into a contemptible hack whose name in the opening credits is a sure sign of sonic disappointment ahead. Of course, for everyone who feels that way, there's also those who fiercely defend his scores as memorable, inventive, and distinct; how many other film composers can you name who have gold records for collections of their motion picture scores? Elfman has two of them, and a legion of devoted fans. This kind of vehement disagreement is, in fact, familiar to Danny Elfman: during the 1980s heyday of his band Oingo Boingo, opinion was roughly split between those who found him an obnoxious noisemaker whose danceable, horn-laden compositions were an embarrasment to the punk circles in which he traveled, and those who found his music creative, infectious, and a welcome change of pace from the business-as-usual of L.A. hardcore.

But as Elfman's career as a film composer enters its third decade, those who defend him are growing fewer, and those who attack him are growing more. The time at which his name in the credits alone was enough to make fans line up at the box office for a ticket are long behind him, and it seems the more he embraced his fame as a Hollywood name worthy of dropping, the more he moved from his ludic, sonically inventive early work to a sense of darkness and bombast that never quite suited him to what can only be described as hackwork in films like A Civil Action, Proof of Life and Red Dragon. The sad thing is, it was not always thus: Elfman got his start composing music for the films of his friend, fan and frequent collaborator, the director Tim Burton -- and the early work they produced together really was special. Back then, Elfman geniunely sounded like someone who might seriously change the game when it came to film scores: his utterly postmodern approach of mixing the high and the low, and his keen sense of comic and dramatic timing, which he used to blow the doors off scenes with a judicious application of musical cues, seemed to be indicators of someone who was there to do more than just collect a paycheck.

The best of Danny Elfman's early collaborations with Tim Burton was the fantastic score to Pee Wee's Big Adventure. A more perfect marriage of score and film is hard to imaging, and the opening sequence of the beloved comedy -- with Pee Wee's activities growing more and more absurd as the main theme becomes louder and louder, finally hammering away at a perfect comic crescendo -- is unforgettable. Unfortunately, the commercial release is marred by many omissions, and by being paired on a double release with Elfman's passable but unspectacular soundtrack to the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School. So, for Elfman aficianados who want to show off what the man was capable of before he started sleepwalking through his career, Beetlejuice is the default pick. Not that it's much of a step down from Pee Wee's Big Adventure; they're both showcases for his blend of acumen and absurdity, his sure comic timing, his ability to use odd percussive patterns and polyrhythms to such a listener into the scene, and his deft mixing of cartoonish exaggeration with clever and appropriate instrumentation. The ghostly conjurations of the score proved that Elfman, despite later evidence to the contrary, was capable of sounding sinister without taking himself too seriously, and its magical mixture of catchy melodic elements and almost avant-garde experimental sounds makes it a collection of music worth listening to even outside of the context of the movie -- the true test of any great score. Beetlejuice is the pinnacle of Elfman's work with Tim Burton, for good and for ill: it never got any better, and it would all be downhill from there.

BEST TRACKS: The famous opening theme to Beetlejuice is a perfect example of what Danny Elfman is capable of when he's not just out to make a buck. Its clever folding of Harry Belafonte's "The Banana Boat Song" into what becomes a whirling, sinister piece of music is funny and unexpected, and the rest of the piece plays out with excellent and energetic stings over a rapid-fire death train of increasing tempos. "Travel Music", with its conjuration of 1950s-style on-the-road dynamics and its simple innocence twisted by its underlying nastiness, works very well, as does the hilarious muzak-from-beyond-the-grave of "The Flier/Lydia's Pep Talk". The eerie "Incantation", with its high-strung percussion that blasts out into an explosion of creepy vocal cues, haunted-house organ and propulsive horns, nicely rounds out the score.

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OST: Enter the Dragon

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Morning Deal Report: Jim Carrey Believes – Or Not

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Sequels ruled the weekend box office, with High School Musical 3: Senior Year opening to a “Holy shit, America, first the Chihuahua and now this?” $42 million. And moviegoers still can’t get enough of that lovable mass murderer Jigsaw, as Saw V took in $30.5 million, good for second place. Pride and Glory performed about as well as you’d expect from a movie that’s been sitting on the shelf since there were only three Saw movies, mopping up $6.3 million. And it should come as no surprise that W. dropped precipitously in the polls, with a weekend take of $5.3 million.

Believe it or not, Jim Carrey is set to play Robert Ripley for director Chris Columbus. The Ripley’s Believe It or Not project has been floundering in development hell for a while (Tim Burton was formerly attached), but Paramount has given Columbus the go-ahead. “Once Columbus’ deal is closed, the studio will hire a writer to draft the project, which remains a Par priority: The studio is aiming for a 2011 release and is hoping the pic spawns a franchise,” Variety obviouslies.

Speaking of Burton, the inevitable has happened: Crispin Glover has joined the cast of Alice in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter role is already taken, so Glover will appear as the Knave of Hearts, who is “put on trial for stealing the Queen of Hearts' tarts and is defended by Alice,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

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Anne Hathaway in Wonderland

Morning Deal Report: Anne Hathaway in Wonderland

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

You probably already know that Tim Burton is directing Alice in Wonderland for Disney, and you most likely wouldn’t be terribly surprised to learn that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are attached (as the Mad Hatter and Red Queen, respectively). Now Burton has found his White Queen, and it’s Rachel Getting Married star Anne Hathaway. “The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch,” The Hollywood Reporter reminds us. Ah, but who is frumious enough to play the Bandersnatch? We’re putting our money on Christopher Walken.

It turns out that October brings not only baseball’s playoffs, but really bad ideas for baseball movies. (I’m still haunted by the image of Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore dancing on the field when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series.) Now we learn that Kevin Costner and Ron Shelton are cooking up a sequel to Bull Durham. Our first thought is that Costner and Tim Robbins are a little old to pass for baseball players (even older than some of the current Yankees), but according to this UPI report (via the New York Post), a solution has been found. “Real-life couple and Durham co-stars Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, who played a pitcher and a baseball groupie respectively in the first installment, are also expected to return for the second film. This time around, they will play the married owners of a Major League Baseball team Costner's character manages, the Post said.”

Tennis, anyone? Frank DeFord’s novel Big Bill is coming to the big screen. It’s based on the true story of tennis legend Bill Tilden, who “dominated tennis in the 1920s, winning six straight U.S. Open singles titles and becoming the first American to win Wimbledon. He was also a contract bridge champ, musicologist, novelist, playwright and actor. On the other side of the ledger, Tilden was famously self-destructive, going to jail twice for sexual misbehavior with teenage boys and dying penniless,” says Variety. Sounds like the feel-good sports story of the year.

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Unwatchable #66: “Jail Bait”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

At last, it’s Ed Wood! For months I’ve been dutifully trudging my way up this list of the 100 worst movies of all time, and somehow made it a third of the way through without encountering a single work by the man celebrated far and wide as the worst filmmaker ever. I suppose that makes sense, in that the most notorious Wood works – the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda – must be lurking near the top of the chart. It so happens that I’d never seen Wood’s second feature, Jail Bait, so this promised to be quite a treat. We’re huge jailbait fans here at the Screengrab…er, in the cinematic sense, that is.

Wood’s work is tough to rank on the Unwatchable scale, just because he’s usually at his most watchable when he’s at his worst. That is, his bizarre mix of enthusiasm and incompetence only soars when he goes completely off the deep end, as in Plan 9 or Bela Lugosi’s infamous “Home? I have no home” monologue from Bride of the Monster. Jail Bait is as shoddily constructed as you’d expect, but the goofy juice doesn’t really get flowing until the last ten minutes or so.

The story concerns handsome young doofus Don Gregor, son of the famed plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor. Instead of lounging around the house and spending his dad’s money, Don has taken to hanging out with low-rent mobster Vic Brady. One night the cops pick Don up for carrying a concealed weapon and his sister Marilyn has to bail him out. (Marilyn is played by Wood’s girlfriend Dolores Fuller, who no doubt worked for free and gives a performance worth every penny.) Marilyn lectures Don that she won’t do so again: “That gun is jail bait!” Wait – the gun is jail bait? Oh, Edward D. Wood, Jr.! I see what you did there! You got me again.

Don doesn’t heed his sister’s warnings – instead, he goes ahead with Vic on a planned robbery and ends up killing a security guard in the process. Vic shoots a witness who survives and can identify both men. The cops (including a pre-Hercules Steve Reeves) go to Dr. Gregor and urge him to convince his son to turn himself in. Before Don can do so, Vic kills him. But how can Vic evade arrest himself? Simple! He’ll blackmail Dr. Gregor into performing plastic surgery on him, promising to return Don alive if the doc gives him a new, unrecognizable face.

Dr. Gregor is prepared to go along with the plan, until he pokes around Vic’s kitchen and finds his son’s corpse standing upright in the pantry. He gives Vic a new face, alright – spoiler alert! – but it’s the face of Don Gregor! The cops arrive on the scene to arrest him for murder, but Vic-with-Don’s-face flees and is gunned down, flopping face-first into the pool.

To be sure, many of the classic Wood virtues are on display here: the cardboard sets, the absurd mix of catatonic and scenery-devouring acting styles, the Sarah Palin dialogue (“I hope I’m happy to know ya.” “South America! The foreign countries! Where we’ll live like kings!”), the 71-minute running time padded out with 26 minutes worth of footage of cars pulling in and out of driveways. There’s even an utterly gratuitous shot of Steve Reeves putting on his shirt, and I haven’t even mentioned the inanely insistent zither score that will probably follow me to the gates of hell. I know it all sounds good, but it mostly plays like a dull episode of a ‘50s cop show. Only the big twist ending, with the unveiling of Vic’s new face (a scene that surely influenced Ed Wood director Tim Burton’s revelation of the Joker’s face in the 1989 Batman) reaches the heights of top-shelf Wood (or the lows of bottom-drawer Wood, depending on how you look at it).

Previously on Unwatchable:
67. Nine Lives
68. Kazaam
69. The Perfect Holiday (pending)
70. Epic Movie
71. Gigli

DVD Digest for September 16, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week is a busy one for lovers of classic cinema- to say nothing of the folks at Warner Home Video.

DVD(s) of the Week: Continuing their ongoing commitment to spotlight film history’s greatest filmmakers, the good folks at Criterion fill a glaring hole in the DVD market with this week’s release of three classics by Max Ophüls- La Ronde, Le Plaisir, and The Earrings of Madame De…. These three films, all made at Ophüls’ artistic and commercial peak, make a lovely introduction to the man’s work, with all the continental sophistication, exquisitely-wrought melodrama, and lavish production values that made his reputation. And stars? You bet- between the three films, you’ll find Jean Gabin, Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux, and Simone Simon. If you can only shell out for one disc, go with Earrings, whose DVD features not only scholarly commentary and a number of featurettes (including an interview with Paul Thomas Anderson, whose complex camera movements were clearly inspired by Ophüls’ work), but also a new printing of the source novel, Louise de Vilmorin’s Madame De…. But really, they’re all worth your money. Now all we need is a Region 1 DVD of Letter From an Unknown Woman…

In addition, this week is a banner occasion for musical fans, led by a double dose of Oscar-winning Vincente Minnelli titles, An American in Paris and Gigi (both Warner), each presented in snazzy new Two-Disc Special Editions. There’s also Warner’s The Busby Berkeley Collection Volume 2, which includes Gold Diggers of 1937, Gold Diggers in Paris, Hollywood Hotel and Variety Show. Other classics coming to DVD this week include: Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner); young Tom Cruise and his Ray-Bans in Risky Business 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (Ryko Distribution), which was spotlighted last week by our very own Phil Nugent; Glenn Close in the live-action 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians (Disney); and The Charlie Chan Collection Volume 5 (Fox).

This week’s roster of recent releases on DVD is headed up by The Wachowski Brothers’ financial and critical bomb Speed Racer (Warner, also Blu-Ray), which I believe is still the most underappreciated movie so far this year. Other recent titles coming to DVD include: Patrick Dempsey in Made of Honor (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Al Pacino in 88 Minutes (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Mike Myers making an ass of himself again in The Love Guru (Universal, also Blu-Ray); the surprisingly affecting Young@Heart (Fox); David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels (Warner); the acclaimed documentary Constantine’s Sword (First Run); and two direct-to-DVD titles, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure (Disney) and Another Cinderella Story (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s new TV on DVD titles include: Chuck Season 1 (Warner); Criminal Minds Season 3 (Paramount); Dirty Sexy Money Season 1 (Disney); My Name Is Earl Season 3 (Fox); Private Practice Season 1 (Disney); and Pushing Daisies Season 1 (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

Finally, in Blu-Ray only titles, this week brings 1408 (Weinstein), Hulk (Universal), Madagascar (Paramount), The Mist (Weinstein), and Shrek the Third (Paramount).

Cartoon Fever: The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

ONE OF THOSE DAYS (1988)

With his distinctive squiggly style and surreal, only-in-animation humor, Bill Plympton’s prolific output is so consistently good it’s hard to pick just one representative sample. This being a shorts list, it’s easy enough to eliminate his features (even really short ones like his musical, The Tune, which comes in at a trim 69 minutes and features the insanely catchy "In Flooby Nooby."). After that, though, it gets tricky: should I highlight his 1987 Oscar-nominated short, Your Face, MTV/animation festival faves like How To Kiss or 25 Ways To Quit Smoking or one of his videos for the likes of Kanye West and “Weird Al” Yankovic? Ultimately, I picked One of Those Days simply because it was the most representative stand-alone Plymptoon I could find on YouTube (though it's also included, along with the other three aforementioned shorts, in Mondo Plympton, which compiles nine of the animator’s finest squiggly moments for your own private Plymptopalooza).

SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES (1984)

Jim Blashfield has the style of an exploding junk shop, with every bit of detritus somehow landing in just the right place. After applying that style to other films and a number of music videos, this story of a man who got a little too curious about the world hiding inside the dark corners of our world remains his masterpiece. But we're confident that someone will be calling him any minute now with an offer to finance the film version of The Crying of Lot 49 that we know he's got in him.

THE TENDER GAME (1958)

The history of animation has a number of brother acts -- the Disneys, the Fleischers, the Quays -- but the Hubleys probably have a hammerlock on the title of First Family of American Animation. John used to work for the big boys: he labored at Disney Studios (where his credits include the "Rite of Spring" episode in Fantasia) until he left over ill feelings stemming from the infamous animators' strike of 1941, after which he created Mr. Magoo for UPA. Hubley was driven out of the majors after running afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee -- what were they expecting him to do, name Foghorn Leghorn as a Trotskyite? -- and began turning out a long stream of gorgeously imaginative animated shorts with his wife, Faith. The Tender Game is a high point and a representative example of their taste for stylized, childlike imagery, music and narration that seems to have sidled in from the nearest beatnik coffee house. After John's death in 1977 -- their last collaboration was the 1977 Doonesbury Special for TV -- Faith worked for many years to turn out the career-apotheosis feature The Cosmic Eye, on which her daughter, Emily, served as associate producer. Emily's first feature, a mixture of live action and animation called The Toe Tactic. premiered on the festival circuit earlier this year.

THANK YOU MASK MAN (1971)

All his life, Lenny Bruce desperately wanted to get into the movies, but the only thing that he had in common with the people who ran the studios in his day was that neither they nor he could ever quite figure out how to use Lenny Bruce in a movie. Lenny's own attempts to star himself in an independent production, such as the infamous Dance Hall Racket (directed by Phil Tucker, the guy whose Robot Monster gave us the indelible image of a guy wearing a gorilla suit with a diver's helmet), never got beyond the camp embarrassment stage, and even the feature length filmed concert (reduced as The Lenny Bruce Performance Film) wasn't made until Bruce was so far gone into his obsession with his own legal case to be very funny. It wasn't until after Bruce's death that the director John Magnuson managed to pull together this animated version of one of Bruce's greatest stand-up fantasies (about the Lone Ranger), which he may have done as penance for directing the Performance Film. That movie often played the midnight circuit in tandem with this cartoon (whose ratty-looking animation is perfectly in sync with Bruce's grungy-minded satire). It was a useful pairing: the live action feature showed Bruce as a broken man, and the cartoon revealed just what had been lost in the breaking.

VINCENT (1982)

Tim Burton conceived and co-directed (with Rick Heinrichs) this uncannily beautiful example of his pop-Gothic style, captured in black and white stop-motion animation. (It was made at a time when Burton, not yet a live-action director, was laboring in the animation department at Disney, where he managed to do little but confuse his employers.) Whatever you think of Burton's later work, it's hard to argue that he didn't nail most of what he had to give in these six and a half minutes. And he made Vincent Price, who had the honor of narrating this tribute to himself, a very happy man.

WHEN THE DAY BREAKS (1999)

Wendy Tilby wrote this strange, beautiful cartoon about a pig who experiences a memento mori when she witnesses the death of a chicken while out shopping for groceries. It was directed by Tilby and Amanda Forbis. No description can really do full justice to its striking look and emotional impact, which is a testament to just how good and just how unearthly good animation can be.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

The Top 20 Movies About Movies (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

ED WOOD (1994)

Some idiots still go into the motion picture business to get rich...but the ones who stick around long after the dreams of fame and fortune have curdled into a nasty hangover of disappointment and massive credit card debt are the genuine addicts, driven by an overpowering, irrational desire to project their inner landscapes onto the real world in search of validation, a little fun and a taste of immortality. I’m guessing Tim Burton’s the type of guy who would’ve found a way to keep making movies even if his star had never risen over Hollywood and he’d wound up shooting cable access fantasias on his days off from Applebee’s. And without a budget, an art department or professional actors, his flaws as a director would have been more obvious, his obsessions would have seemed more silly, his distinctive aesthetic would have been reduced to cheesy, ticky-tack attempts at grandeur, easily mocked by a society incapable of distinguishing between talent and success. Ed Wood, Jr. was a similar addict, and it’s definitely arguable whether he would have eventually developed into a better director if he’d ever gotten the breaks and budgets he so desperately craved, but regardless of his ultimate worth as a filmmaker, Burton clearly recognized a kindred spirit in the cross-dressing auteur’s bizarrely inimitable proto-Goth sensibility, which (combined with a perfect storm of pitch-perfect career highpoints from Johnny Depp, Martin Landau and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, working from the fascinating Wood biography Nightmare of Ecstasy by Rudolph Grey) resulted in one of the greatest films ever made about the potential for transcendence in even the shittiest art.

GODS AND MONSTERS (1998)

For the most part, this beautifully imagined story about the last days of the great cult director James Whale (Ian McKellan) is set long after Whale had retired from that Hollywood silliness and stopped setting foot on soundstages. But it remains a fine tribute to the surprising lasting power of movie images, and it does have one terrific moviemaking scene, when Whale flashes back to the experience of directing Ernest Thesiger and company in The Bride of Frankenstein. No one in a movie has better captured the appeal of making movies than McKellan when he rhapsodizes about how much fun it was, "working with your friends." And Brendan Fraser, as Mr. Jimmy's hunky new friend, contributes one of his best screen performances ever when, having watched the movie with his razzing pals, he gently feels relief wash over him as Whale reassures him that, yes, parts of it are supposed to be funny.

BOMBSHELL (1933)

Jean Harlow was an usual critter in her day, a woman who, once she had a few hits to her name and a few scandals notched in her belt, was unimaginable as anything but a movie star. Compare her to Madonna or Angelina Jolie and now it's clear that she was decades ahead of her time, but in her own decade she must have seemed quite the freak. Luckily, she knew how to laugh at herself, and this early talkie, in which she plays a glamourpuss celebrity so seedy yet so artificial that she has the Wizard of Oz for a father, remains the classic template for Hollywood's satiric take on itself in the studio-contract era. Co-starring Lee Tracy, who in the talkie era was to reporters and press agents what Seth Rogen is today to scoring out of his league.

LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (2003)

Thom Anderson's dense, meaningful masterpiece works on so many levels that, even at over three hours long, the more one sees it, the more one notices what is omitted as much as what is included. Incredibly ambitious, relentlessly formalist, and bearing both the eye of an artist and the soul of a documentarian committed to social justice, Los Angeles Plays Itself is almost totally unique among modern films. Piecing together a century of Hollywood's portrayals of its own surroundings, from the gorgeous Art Deco-tinted luxury of early films to the deliberately hazy nostalgia of Chinatown to the socialist-realist depictions of filmmakers like Charles Burnette, it's a movie that not only presents an almost complete vision of a modern city – and presents that city with love, respect, disappointment and rage, as appropriate – but also manages to do something quite profound at the same time, which is to use film as a medium for portraying how film changes the way we think, perceive and remember a place. Legal issues will likely prevent Los Angeles Plays Itself from ever getting the wide theatrical release it so richly deserves – it features footage from hundreds of films and television shows, and the clearance rights would be ruinously expensive for any production company – but it turns up occasionally at festivals and academic screenings, and the entirely of the movie was, until recently, available on YouTube. (Keep checking -- the copyright cops work slow.) Not only one of the finest movies about filmmaking imaginable, but one of the most unique films ever made, period.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three & Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

15 Films That (Almost) Could’ve Been Directed By Somebody Else (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

SCENES FROM A MALL (1991) & 2 DAYS IN PARIS (2007), Not Directed by Woody Allen

While not as legion as Hitchcock (or even Tarantino) imitators, there have certainly been a fair number of pretenders to the Woodman’s throne over the years (including, in the recent period, Mr. Konigsberg himself), but Scenes From a Mall (which, if it were actually part of the Allen oeuvre, would rank well north of Hollywood Ending and somewhere south of Sweet and Lowdown) deserves special mention if only for the Allen-esque stammer of the dialogue delivered by none other than Woody Allen himself, charmingly paired with Bette Midler as a slick, successful, L.A.-loving Bizarro World version of his usual New York schlub persona (yet still kvetching endlessly about the difficulties of getting the whole love and happiness thing to work out). Meanwhile, after numerous attempts at regenerating his aforementioned trademark schlub persona, Dr. Who-style, into the form of younger actors ranging from John Cusack and Will Ferrell to Jason Biggs and Scarlett Johansson, it’s astonishing that Allen has never, to my knowledge, thought to cast the wry, world-class neurotic über-Jew Adam Goldberg in one of his films. Fortunately, writer/director/actress (and former Goldberg paramour) Julie Delpy corrected the obvious cinematic oversight with 2 Days In Paris, the type of hot-blooded, fast-talking, quick-witted meditation on life, romance, family, morality and mortality that used to be Allen's default setting before a string of duds forced his own recent decampment to Europe in search of inspiration.

MYSTERY MEN (1999), Not Directed By Tim Burton

This loudly hyped, much derided, and in fact somewhat underappreciated superhero parody (based on characters created by Flaming Carrot writer-artist Bob Burden) boasts elaborate set design, a smashing pop-Gothic look mixed with improvisational comedy riffs, satirical homages to various geekish interests, and Paul Reubens, all of which helped remind viewers of Tim Burton. In fact, the unusal-sounding name of the film's first-time director, Kinka Usher, actually helped inspire a rumor that the movie was, in fact, directed by Burton under an obviously contrived alias, even though Burton was busy at the time trying to bring his own Sleepy Hollow to market. Other evidence that Burton had nothing to do with it include the fact that the action scenes are fairly coherent, along with the movie's role in making Smash Mouth's "All Star" the hardest-to-avoid pop song in America for a good two or three years. (If the devoutly contrarian Burton had had a hand in that, he'd have probably joined the French Foreign Legion to atone.) Based on available evidence, there is in fact a Kinka Usher, but after the disappointing reception to this movie, his film career seems to have folded up its tent.

CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (1995), Not Directed by Terry Gilliam

Thanks to the fluke of his having broken in with Monty Python's Flying Circus and what that seems to have done to his sense of humor, the Minnesota-born Terry Gilliam has been fated to spend most of his life striking many people as sort of English. Oddly enough, the most successful Gilliam movie of the last fifteen or so years may have been cooked up by a couple of Frenchmen. Like Gilliam, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet began their work as collaborators working in animation; with their first feature, Delicatessen, they announced their intent to make live-action films with the same degree of frenzied visual imagination (and the same sort of sick humor) usually found only in cartoons. But with Lost Children, they dove head-first into Gilliam's territory, with a sophisticated take on childlike fantasy that boasted a complicated plot, a look that was half fairy tale and half cyberpunk, and a villain out to steal the dreams of children. If Gilliam had made it himself after Time Bandits and Brazil, it would have made a far more fitting end to his "imagination trilogy" than the film he did make, The Adventures of Baron Muchausen. Instead, Gilliam did at least recognize the filmmakers as kindred spirits, and was quick to issue a blurb that they could use in the trailer.

And finally...

CHARADE (1963), Not Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

To tell the truth, we here at The Screengrab think that the tendency to compare just about any attempt at a stylish thriller to the work of Alfred Hitchcock has been overblown. Hitchcock didn't invent the concept of screen thrills, any more than (say) John Ford invented men on horseback or Stanley Donen, the director of Charade, invented singing and dancing. They all just happened to be really good at their specialties. What makes Charade, with its Parisian setting and alternately jokey and spooky murders, so much of a special case is its use of its star, Cary Grant, and the way it links this charmingly light romantic-mystery-comedy to North by Northwest and To Catch A Thief, the films that Hitchcock built around Grant after the strain of Hollywood comedy that made Grant a star had dried up or curdled. (Hitchcock also directed Grant in one of his best movies from the 1940s, Notorious, but that was in a darker, more hard-boiled style of tortured romance.) In all these movies, the filmmakers take Grant's star image into account in a slightly ironic way that makes it all the more glamorous and irresistable. (This is the movie where Audrey Hepburn, the damsel in distress, asks Grant, "Do you know what's wrong with you?" and then answers her own question: "Nothing.") They all hold up a lot better than the other movies that Grant made during the last twenty years or so of his career, and in fact, Charade, which he made just before he turned sixty, is for all practical purposes the last real "Cary Grant" movie. He did star in two more pictures, Father Goose and Walk, Don't Run (a remake of The More the Merrier), but they were half-hearted stabs at seeing if Grant could delight the public as, respectively, a boozy, unshaven old grump or a lovable match-making old busybody. Neither was a success, and Grant, sensing that his fans had no interest in seeing him evolve into anything besides Cary Grant, graciously retired from the screen. (Trivia note: in 2002. Jonathan Demme remade Charade as The Truth About Charlie, a movie whose Big Idea was, as Demme explained it, to see what Charade would look like if it had been directed in the flyblown experimental style of a French New Wave director working in 1964. It turned out that if the movie had been made that way, it would have kind of sucked.)

Click Here For Part One, Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: July 26-August 1, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The weekend is here and you could probably find something to do outside, like go to the beach or the dog track, but we both know it’s way too hot out there. For your own safety, I implore you to stay home, crank up the air conditioner and relax with a fruity drink and the finest Screengrab posts of the week.

You know us, always finding diamonds in the dung, like the Top Ten Great Scenes From Not-So-Great Movies (Parts One, Two and Three)

We got up close and personal with Sean Connery and Melissa Leo, but kept a safe distance from Shigeo Tokuda, the Godzilla of geriatric porn.

We bucked the trends and chose to pay some attention to that arthouse curiosity The Dark Knight – including the top 10 reasons it isn’t as good as you think and the foolish editorials comparing Batman and Bush.

We wondered who was goofier – Jon Voight or George Lucas? Then we wondered why Tim Burton had to remake Planet of the Apes.

We looked back to Around the World in 80 Days and ahead to Body of Lies, W and the next Harry Potter.

We checked out the Venice Film Festival lineup (not to mention Anne Hathaway)

And some would say we nuked the fridge.

When Good Directors Go Bad: Planet of the Apes (2001, Tim Burton)

Paul Clark — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Of the marquee filmmakers currently working in Hollywood, Tim Burton’s style is one of the most recognizable. A former animator turned filmmaker, Burton imbues his best films with a look inspired by old-school horror films and classic cartoons, while reflecting a deep affection for outsiders. While Burton’s first two features, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, won the director a cult following, it wasn’t until his third that he applied his style to a blockbuster. With 1989’s Batman, Burton demonstrated that he could apply his Gothic visuals to a big-budget franchise in a way that translated into box-office gold.

Aside from the sequel Batman Returns, Burton’s 1990s output didn’t meet with the same fiscal success, but he nonetheless became a fan favorite, and despite the public’s habitual hostility to sequels, there was a lot of anticipation toward 2001’s Burton-directed “re-imagining” of the science-fiction classic Planet of the Apes. However, much of this excitement dissipated upon the film’s release. Aside from a few supporting performances and the state-of-the-art makeup work by Rick Baker, the general consensus was that the movie was a bloated mess. Worst of all, Burton fans saw the movie as strictly a paycheck job, a cash-grab blockbuster from the director they loved. Watching the movie recently, I found it somewhat more interesting than I did on its original release, but it’s still not very good.

One of the problems is that the ape characters are far more interesting than the humans. A great deal of attention is lavished on the apes, not only in terms of the makeup, but also characterization-wise. Each ape is given a distinct and easily-defined personality, be it the ambitious General Thade (Tim Roth), the slimy “human cargo” dealer Limbo (Paul Giamatti), or the human-rights crusader Ari (Helena Bonham Carter). They’re not especially complex, but they’re fun to watch. By contrast, from square-jawed hero Capt. Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) on down, the human characters are bland and unmemorable.

For a while, it feels like the film is attempting something subversive, by placing the audience’s sympathies with the apes to make them ponder their treatment of “lesser” species. However, it eventually becomes clear that Burton is painting the humans as the “outsider” characters. This might have worked had the movie given us any reason to care about the human characters, but it never does, aside from the fact that the audience will be almost invariably comprised of humans rather than apes. As a result, the film is at cross-purposes- the humans are meant to be the good guys, but the apes are far more entertaining.

Most compelling of all is Ari, who ends up torn between her nature as a chimpanzee and her desire to help humans receive “separate but equal” treatment. At one point, the film sets up a quasi-love triangle between Ari, Davidson, and loincloth-clad human Daena (Estella Warren)- a development that becomes all the more fascinating since Ari is far more appealing than Daena, ape status notwithstanding. Unfortunately, the film shies away from the possibilities of inter-species romance, and after Ari’s advances are thwarted, she attempts to appeal to Thade, who casts her out once and for all. Because she is forcefully banished from the apes, Ari’s character loses quite a bit of thematic interest that she might have kept had she freely chosen to take the humans’ side.

Most surprisingly, Planet of the Apes was Burton’s most visually uninspired film to date. Despite the inventive makeup and creative set design from longtime Burton associate Rick Heinrichs, the images in the film are largely forgettable. Part of the problem was the relatively flat studio lighting, which gave audiences ample opportunity to savor Baker’s and Heinrichs’ work but which bore little resemblance to the trademark “Burton look” of films like Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and Sleepy Hollow. Certain shots bear the Burton stamp, but for the most part the film could just as easily have been made by an anonymous studio director instead of one of the Hollywood’s most inimitable stylists.

Then there’s the ending. Burton’s Planet of the Apes took a lot of flack at the time for its finale, which confused many audience members while annoying others. Upon further review, I sort of like it, not least for how it appropriates the ending of Pierre Boulle’s original novel. However, it couldn’t possibly live up to the final scene in the original film, which was audacious in both its simplicity and its allegorical implications. By comparison, the “new” ending came off as a case of the filmmakers trying too hard to outdo the classic version. In a way, this is reflective of the whole film- despite the best efforts of the filmmakers to outshine the original Planet of the Apes, the inspiration just isn’t there.

Ignominious Exits: The Top Ten Worst Final Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Bela Lugosi, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)

Depending who you ask (specifically if one of the people you ask is Bela Lugosi’s son and the other is Tim Burton), Ed Wood, Jr. was either a talentless, exploitive vulture or a scrappy independent filmmaker who befriended Lugosi late in life and (inadvertently) made him relevant to a whole new audience of younger fans through cult classics like Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster, climaxing with Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the actor in 1994’s Ed Wood. Either way, though, Plan 9 From Outer Space was hardly the most dignified send-off for a Hungarian film and theater legend and one of the best known international movie stars of the 1930s. For one thing, Lugosi only appears onscreen for a few minutes of the so-called “worst movie of all time” (a designation Screengrab’s own Scott Von Doviak would undoubtedly challenge), but the posthumous “performance” (culled from stock footage) isn’t even listed as an official film performance on the actor’s Internet Movie Database page, possibly because it was completed by a chiropractor.

Errol Flynn in CUBAN REBEL GIRLS (1959)

In his prime, Errol Flynn was the last word in swashbuckling action on screen and the most legendary stud in America in real life. (Reports of his bedroom escapades during the war years inspired the optimistic G.I. catch phrase "in like Flynn.") By 1959, though, Flynn was a has-been and a tax deadbeat with a nearly defunct liver. Lacking the energy to do much that might pass for active, never mind acting, he wrote and narrated this low-budget film, in which he appears as a reporter telling us about the "wonderful" rebel girls who are doing their part for the Cuban revolution. Flynn had actually met Fidel Castro, who gave the project his blessing, and the film returns the favor, though it probably had its origins not in political fervor but a mixture of contractual obligation -- Flynn owed somebody a movie -- and cherchez la femme. Cuban Rebel Girls was actually shaped as a vehicle for Beverly Aadland, a talentless would-be actress who was Flynn's steady companion during the last couple years of his life. (She was about fourteen when they met.) The movie was Flynn's last and her only real credit, though the first-time director, Barry Mahon, followed it up with a stream of films, which tend to have such titles as International Smorgas-Broad and Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico. (Another of his flicks, the Cold War paranoia-fest Rocket Attack, U.S.A., made it to the summit of trash that is Mystery Science Theater 3000.) In every compartment of his life -- co-star/girlfriends, directors, revolutionaries -- Errol sure did know how to pick 'em.

Henry Fonda in ON GOLDEN POND (1981)

Henry Fonda had a very long and honorable career, but his last really notable movie role was probably in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, made when he was in his early sixties. The role of the ruthless but naive professional killer Frank -- the dark side of capitalistism wearing the face of old Hollywood's favorite spokesman for liberal idealism -- gave him a chance to turn his iconic image on its head while doing things he'd never done before as an actor, and that wouldn't have been a bad way to hang it up. But instead he kept at it through the 1970s, plugging away in disposable roles in ever tackier movies (Ash Wednesday, Tentacles, The Swarm, Meteor, etc.). In one way, his final feature film role in On Golden Pond qualified as a comeback: it was, at least, a respectable part in a high-profile prestige release. But it was also an exploitative piece of casting that put the frail-looking, visibly ailing Fonda on screen as a sick, possibly dying old man, and even tapped into gossip about his relationship with his children by casting his real-life rebellious daughter Jane as a character who's constantly lectured about getting over the past and getting on with her life. (How much of a coincidence was it that, at the time, Jane Fonda was in the process of packing up her sixties image as a political firebrand and remaking herself as the yuppie queen of the workout tape?) For audiences, the emotions that the sentimental movie meant to arouse became inseparable from the guilty feelings one might have had about having come to regard the older Fonda as a has-been. The media took the bait and latched onto the movie in a strange way: it basically double-dog-dared the Motion Picture Academy to not give Fonda an Oscar for his performance, knowing that he'd never gotten one before and that he very likely wouldn't have another chance to earn one. The campaign paid off, but at a loss of some dignity for the man at its center.

Click here for Part One & Part Two

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

It’s been a good month for filmmaker feud enthusiasts, with both the Clint Eastwood/Spike Lee dust-up and the Werner Herzog/Abel Ferrara war of words heating up simultaneously. The L.A. Times has taken the opportunity to put together their own rundown of “Directors gone wild,” reminding us of a few directorial battles of days gone by.

By an odd coincidence – or maybe kryptonite is somehow involved – two of the feuds revolve around the Man of Steel. You may recall the aborted Tim Burton version of Superman that was to star Nicolas Cage about a decade ago. Kevin Smith had penned a script for Superman Lives! (you can read it here), but Burton wanted no part of it. Later, when Burton remade Planet of the Apes, Smith accused him of ripping off the ending from one of his comic books. (Why the Clerks auteur would want to take credit for such a widely derided twist remains a mystery.) Burton disagreed, telling the New York Post, “Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.” Smith has been known to sign bootleg copies of the Superman script “Fuck Tim Burton,” though he claims this is done tongue-in-cheek.

Then there’s the case of Superman II, directed by Richard Lester – unless it was directed by Richard Donner. Lester’s cut is the one most of us grew up on, but Donner – who was replaced midway through filming the sequel – recently released his own version on DVD. “Though the sequel was more highly regarded than the original Superman,” says the Times, “Lester’s follow-up Superman III was trashed, leading many fans to believe anything good in Superman II was because of Donner.”

The Times feature also includes Uwe Boll’s feuds with Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, proving that feuds taking place entirely within the mind of Uwe Boll are eligible for the list.

Related:
Spike Strikes Back
Werner Herzog vs. Abel Ferrara: Round 2

We Ain't Watching THIS "Watchmen"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:45:00 GMT

As we've said pretty much every week for the last, oh, say, year and a half, we intend to bring you every single bit of news we possibly can about Zack Snyder's forthcoming adaptation of Watchmen, widely held to be the best superhero comic ever written. (By the way, this is approximately the nine billionth article I've written about the guy, and I still have to check to see if his first name is spelled 'Zack' or 'Zach'.) And, as we will probably continue to say for the next, oh, say, year and a half until the movie actually opens, we don't really expect it to be any good. We could be wrong -- in fact, we're practically praying we are -- but given Snyder's previous track record, our hopes aren't exactly sky-high.

But one thing's for sure: Snyder is unqualified in his love for the original source material, and at the very least, he seems to be dedicated to making the Watchmen movie as faithful to the graphic novel as the format of the film will possibly allow. This could in and of itself be a big problem, leading fans to wonder why, if he's just going to film the panels verbatim, why anyone had to bother making the movie in the first place, but we do know this: no matter how bad Watchmen turns out to be, it could have been worse. Much, much, much worse.

How do we know, you ask? Because around 1989, screenplay hack Sam Hamm -- probably best known for having written the first two Batman movies directed by Tim Burton -- was commissioned (and paid pretty handsomely, if the rumors are true) to write a screenplay adaptation of Watchmen which, as buzz at the time had it, would be directed by Terry Gilliam. The resulting script was absolutely abysmal. It completely stripped the story of all its psychological and philosophical depth, turning it into a straightforward action-thriller without a iota of the qualities that made the comic great and stuffed to the gills with ridiculous, shopworn action movie tropes (the opening sequence, featuring a terrorist attack on the Statue of Liberty, is hilariously bad in its triteness). It turned the characters -- those that remained, as almost all the comic's rich backstory is stripped away -- into lame caricatures, with the bleak, blackly funny moralist Rorschach transformed into a Wolverine parody making lame jokes about mimes. And worst of all, the ending, which in the book is a masterwork of moral ambiguity, is transformed into a sci-fi 'twist ending' so moronic that it's impossible to begin to describe. No matter how bad the Zack Snyder version might turn out, it could be worse, because it could be the Hamm script, which was blessedly never produced.

How do we know all this? Because we've read it. And now, so can you!