The Screengrab

Hi, folks. I'm Lance, the Screengrab's monkey intern, and I'll be handling the Highlight Reel this week. Frankly I asked for this opportunity to address you today because I'm simply sickened that a few bad apples have once again set back my community's efforts to be taken seriously. Folks, it's hard out here for a chimp. Yet we've got these bozos in Japan running around with bottles of Jager for a handful of magic beans. Now it's true that I'm not compensated monetarily here at Nerve, but that's because it's an internship, fer crying out loud! Soon I'll be an editor here, and I'll be able to put an end to insulting stuff like this Top 25 Leading Men list. I keep asking the Screengrabbers, where is the list of top leading monkeys? They keep saying they'll get around to it, but I see them laughing when they think I'm not around. Sure, they'll throw me a bone by reviewing Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood, but they treat it as a joke!  Believe me, folks, there are statues of Cheeta where I come from.

Anyway, I guess I've got to pretend that some of the stuff these clowns wrote is worth reading, so here are your highlights of the week:

New Reviews: Ashes of Time Redux, Fireproof, An American Carol

When British Comics Attack: Simon Pegg vs. Ricky Gervais

Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals (ha ha, very funny)

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What made The Karate Kid a hit?: The Karate Kid is nothing if not a formula movie, and a number of ingredients were combined to make the film resound with audiences. To begin with, there’s the always dependable “underdog” element, which director John G. Avildsen previously mined with his Oscar-winning film Rocky. Then, of course, there was a sport that the hero had to learn in order to succeed- karate, of course, to capitalize on the burgeoning martial-arts craze. Finally, it was also a high-school movie- one which found new kid Daniel (Ralph Macchio), recently moved to California from New Jersey, forced to learn karate to fight off the bullies. With these three elements, it hardly mattered to audiences that the film was almost completely predictable.

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The second in my weekend mini-festival of movies made by and for people who hate people like me is Fireproof.  So widely is former TV star/religious fanatic/banana enthusiast Kirk Cameron associated with the movie that the theater I went to here in South Texas was advertising it as "Kirk Cameron's Fireproof".  As a thesis statement, this is something I'm eager to put to the test, but just the way it was phrased...is Kirk Cameron really that much of a draw?  Seeing the movie so advertised -- and I later discovered this theater was far from the only place where the movie was thus billed -- was, for me, akin to seeing a marquee reading "Bounthanh Xaynhachack's Appaloosa".  (It's also not entirely accurate:  Cameron didn't write or direct the film, and may not actually know what writing and directing are, as his claim that he was unable to kiss the female lead in Fireproof because she is not his wife suggests that he doesn't actually know what acting is.)  Still, like I said, this movie isn't made for me.  If there are lost millions for whom Kirk Cameron is a legit box office draw -- and the crowded house in the theater suggested that there just might be -- then for tonight, I would be one of them.

In Fireproof, Cameron plays a firefighter who is gradually falling out of love with his wife, played by Fireproof's Erin Bethea.  (Cameron's downright Dukakasian appearance when decked out in fireman gear that looks a size too big for him makes one question why it was chosen as his character's fictional profession, until you gradually realize that it's so they can cut to an occasional action-packed fire rescue as  respite from the constant relationship yackety blap.  That's right, Christian males:  this is a chick flick.)  The reasons are murky, though it's clearly implied that it's mostly her fault for getting on his nerves:  Cameron is relentlessly misogynistic in the movie, and seems to want to repair his marriage out of a sort of bloody-minded sense of obligation than because he actually cares for his wife.  In order to patch things up with the missus, Fireman Kirk decided to follow the teachings of a book called The Love Dare (originally just a made-up gimmick for the movie, now actually available as the producers sensed the presence of additional fleece on the flock); in the end, he learns to conquer his indifference and hostility and grudgingly love his life partner again.  

The biggest problem with Fireproof isn't that Cameron's character, who is named Caleb Holt and acts like it, is an unlikable jerk.  (We're constantly assured by the movie that he is a good person, generally by way of rescuing people from fires instead of just standing around watching them burn to death, but nothing in his behavior towards his wife, his family, his friends, or anyone who isn't actually engulfed in flames manages to convince you that he's not irredeemably schmucky.)  The biggest problem is that the movie is deadly dull.  One of the biggest problems with any message movie is that the message is generally thought by the filmmakers to be more important than the movie part, and that's the case here in spades.  Why should any of us give a shit if Caleb and Catherine can save their marriage, when the script gives us no reason to care about them and the actors give us no reason to like them?  Say what you will about An American Carol (for instance, you could say it sucks), but at least it wasn't boring.  

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You might think everyone would be happy now that the latest DVD release of Touch of Evil contains both the originally released theatrical cut and the version restored to the dictates of the famous Orson Welles memo a decade ago. But no! Apparently there are some aspect ratio issues to contend with. At his eponymous blog, Dave Kehr writes, “the sentiment of the group seems to be that we all want to vent about the Touch of Evil 50th anniversary edition, with its highly controversial 1.85 aspect ratio. There’s clearly no cut and dried answer here, in the absence of any documentary evidence, but my eye tells me that it’s too tight. The shot above shows some obvious trimming at the upper frame line, but for the most part the 1.85 version that Universal has released seems to give preference to head room while cutting out the less conspicuous compositional elements at the bottom of the frame. It all feels a bit tenuous and unstable to me, like a chord that hasn’t quite been allowed to resolve itself.”

At Parallax View, Sean Axmaker isn’t so sure about that.

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Adam Sandler's upcoming family comedy looks surprisingly un-painful.

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This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance.  Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me.  These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.  

But hey, so what?  I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me.  I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me.  I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me.  I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone.  I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out.  The first tasty bowl of arsenic:  David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways.  Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime?  Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day?  Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal?  I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane.  Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny.  I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't.  It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack.  It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability:  the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from.  Or, to put it another way:  the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly.  If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does.  The old, non-political David Zucker knew better:  he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.  

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A few years ago, a glitteringly restored version of Wong Kar-wai's second feature, Days of Being Wild (1991) was released in the U.S. to general ecstasy from American Wong fans who had only been able to catch the movie on videotape or Chinatown showings of well-worn prints. Now, inspired by the discovery that many prints of his Ashes of Time had been deteriorating, Wong has gone to great pains to buff that movie up and re-release it as Ashes of Time Redux. An odd, distinctively dreamy martial arts/swordplay film set in the desert, Ashes was Wong's third production but his fourth film released to theaters; he spent some two years working on it, taking time to dash off his masterpiece, Chungking Express, in quick order and having it ready for release while Ashes was still in post-production. Ashes never got much play in this country, either, though it's been seen just enough to be widely regarded as beautiful but bewildering.

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Japanese actor Ken Ogata has died at the age of 71. A veteran performer who made the leap to movies after achieving stardom in the 1965 TV drama Taikoko, Ogata was best known to Western filmgoers as a major collaborator of the great director Shohei Imamura. In 1979, Ogata gave a brave, powerful performance as a wandering sociopath in Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine, based on the true story of an actual serial killer. Almost thirty years and many serial-murderer movies later, Ogata's work in that film retains its special fascination as perfectly contained depiction of a suffering man who has no way to connect to the world except to lash out at it. Four years later, they re-teamed for The Ballad of Narayama, starring Ogata as a man required by village tradition to carry his aged mother up a mountainside and leave her there to die. The film won the Palm d'or at Cannes and Ogata received the Japanese Academy Award for his performance. He also appeared in Imamura's Eijanaika (1981) and Zegen (1987).

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A couple of weeks ago, I told you all about my experience watching the restored version of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at Fantastic Fest, and in the process managed to anger some hardcore Apes fans. Apparently my tone was a bit too cavalier for their liking, and they were particularly offended that I didn’t do a shot-by-shot comparison between the existing version of Conquest and the bloodier, less conciliatory cut that will be released as part of the new Blu-Ray Apes boxed set. As it turns out, I may not have taken the movie seriously enough – but not for the reasons these fans cited. No, it was my skepticism that apes would someday be serving me beer that proves now to be unfounded. Indeed, the events foretold in Conquest – the violent overthrow of human society by an ape revolution – may be mere months away.

Shocking evidence after the jump.

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DUSTIN HOFFMAN (1937 - )



He isn't on this list so much for his work in the later years, though Ishtar definitely gets honorable mention. It is more for the deliciously anti-leading man stuff he did way back when. He redefined the romantic hero in The Graduate: "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?"  So lost and confused, so attractive. No wonder he gets the girl (and her mother). Then there's more heroes against the odds:  Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, the somewhat psychotic-seeming protagonist of Marathon Man and, well, Tootsie. Here's to you Dustin Hoffman.

JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO (1933 - )



How goes the plot of Breathless again? Can't remember? Well maybe that is because you were distracted by the dreaminess of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Seriously, the man took the Humphrey Bogart cigarette thing and improved upon it. How many actors can do that? He made this film nerdess get a Jean Seberg haircut and take up a Gauloises Blondes habit when she was sixteen. Unfortunatly she never ended up with Jean Paul in a hotel room. Oh well. At least Pierrot Le Fou is coming up on my Netflix list.

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PETER O’TOOLE (1932 - )



The standard line on Peter O’Toole is that he’s the greatest actor to never win an Academy Award. He should have won it for Lawrence of Arabia, of course:  selected by David Lean based on his stage work (like most great British leading men, who come from a culture where theatre is not synonymous with frothy mass-market musicals, O’Toole carried on a very successful stage career contemporaneous to his film acting), he became an instant superstar. Perhaps the Academy simply assumed, around the time he appeared in My Favorite Year, that if drinking hadn’t killed him by age forty, he’d be around forever and they could award him at their leisure. Though raised in Leeds and soaked in London theatrical tradition, O’Toole is the most Irish of actors: not only for his name and his reputation as a hard drinker, but also for his whimsy, his sly charm, his often self-deprecating humor, his reputation as a raconteur without peer (his autobiographical series Loitering with Intent are some of the most enjoyable books ever penned by a movie star, and show that he shares more in common with Flann O’Brien and Brendan Behan than nationality), and, when a role calls for it, fiery intensity. His roles have run the gamut from savage countercultural tour de forces (The Ruling Class) to respectable grand-old-man performances (The Last Emperor), and he’s got a third installment of his autobiography coming out, as well as a performance alongside John Malkovich in a big-screen adaptation of “The Song of Roland”. Hurry up, AMPAS; no one lives forever.

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BURT REYNOLDS (1936 - )



It may be hard for you young whippersnappers to believe, but 30 years ago, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world. He'd be the first to admit that his career management skills were never a match for his good ol' boy charisma and winking, bubblegum-popping likability – in fact, he's practically made a second career out of admitting it. His forgettable early career in television and B-movies (Navajo Joe, anyone?) isn't what convinced John Boorman to cast Reynolds in his breakthrough role in Deliverance; rather, it was his easy command of the Carson panel as a guest host of The Tonight Show that led to his star-making turn as Lewis Medlock. His Southern charm and Marlboro Man looks led to a series of redneck roles, from White Lightning to Smokey and the Bandit, which became the second-highest grossing movie of 1977, behind only Star Wars. Reynolds went to that well a few times too many, famously turning down Terms of Endearment to reteam with hick flickster Hal Needham for Stroker Ace. His career never came close to returning to the heights of Smokey, but he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Boogie Nights. True to form, he fired his agent after seeing the rough cut, fearing his career was ruined…and then when the movie instead revived his career, he squandered the comeback opportunity by going right back to making crap again.

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5. PAUL NEWMAN (1925-2008)



As the man who inspired this list, it's entirely fitting that Mr. Newman wound up in our Top 5...and we recently posted 10 good reasons why (in addition to the official Screengrab obituary by Phil Nugent) so, uh...moving on to number 4...

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10. SIDNEY POITIER (1927 - )



Poitier's breakthrough as the first African-American actor fully recognized as a leading man and star secured him a permanent place in the cultural history of the movies, but his status as a major actor and one of the great talents of his day may have eroded a little. In part this is because a lot of the movies he starred in were high-minded tosh that have dated very badly, not least because of the perceived need to present Poitier's characters as being superhuman and even morally superior to whites, the thinking being that a black man wouldn't be worth building a movie around if he were merely human. But just as Jackie Robinson had to play baseball extraordinarily well to earn his place on the roster of the Brooklyn Dodgers, it was Poitier's enormous talent that made most of his movies watchable at all. Even in something like To Sir, With Love, his powerful presence and banked fires seems informed by the mixture of intelligence and anger that made him stand out as the student worth saving in the juvenile-delinquency melodrama The Blackboard Jungle. It would be nice to report that, as the sixties gave way to the seventies and opportunities began to open up for black artists, Poitier was able to drop the black messiah act and take more challenging, morally complicated parts, but instead, he seemed to accept the idea that "Sidney Poitier" was a fixed concept that had no place in the era of Super Fly and Shaft. (In one of his 1971 movies, Brother John, his mistreated black Southerner character turned out to really be Jesus.) Poitier withdrew from the center of the film world, concentrating on directing and appearing in light comedies, aimed at the underserved African-American family audience, in which he played tightass straight man to such co-stars as Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby. Them after a long layoff, he turned up acting again in such movies as Shoot to Kill, Little Nikita, and Sneakers. He didn't look as if he'd aged much and he could still command the screen, but the new scripts sucked about as much as the old ones had. He appears to have been effectively retired for the last decade or so.

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15. AMITABH BACHCHAN (1942 - )



Devotees of Bollywood cinema won’t need any explanation for why Bachchan is included here. But for those of you who are scratching your heads, imagine a movie star with the brooding good looks of a young Al Pacino, combined with formidable gifts for goofy comedy and intense drama alike. Now imagine that this supposedly imaginary star is one hell of a dancer as well -- maybe not Fred Astaire, but with an infectious dance style nonetheless. Put those ingredients together and you’ve got Bachchan, who was the reigning superstar of Bollywood cinema in the late seventies and early eighties before being temporarily sidelined due to a stunt gone bad on the set of his movie Coolie. Bachchan -- known to fans as “Big B” -- began his career as the Mumbai film industry’s resident “Angry Young Man,” but quickly segued into more heroic roles in a string of hits that came at the end of the 1970s. With his imposing figure and deep baritone voice, Big B became best-known for what were called “masala movies” (such as the 1978 classic Don, featuring Big B in a dual role) that required the combination of comedy, drama, romance, action, and dancing that few actors could provide, but which Bachchan could pull off almost effortlessly. And he looked good doing it, too -- who else could not only keep his dignity, but actually look cool in that purple outfit and newsboy hat ensemble he sported in Amar Akbar Anthony?  Since appearing on the scene in 1969, Big B has appeared in more than 175 movies, plus innumerable television appearances and a stint as host of India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, all of which have helped to make him one of Bollywood’s biggest names even today. Unlike many leading men of foreign descent, Big B never made the move to Hollywood. But then, he didn’t have to -- with his talent and charisma, Hollywood clearly needed Amitabh Bachchan more than he needed Hollywood.

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20. GENE HACKMAN (1930 - )



Hackman was 33 when he made his movie debut in Robert Rossen's Lilith; he got to play a scene with Warren Beatty, who, admiring his colleague's mastery of his craft and maybe also thinking that his potato-faced plainness provided a splendid contrast on-screen to his own Colgate smile and dashing looks, cast him as his brother in Bonnie and Clyde. By that time, Hackman, voted Least Likely to Succeed by the good folks at the Pasadena Playhouse (a title he shared with his roommate Dustin Hoffman), had begun to build a steady career on the basis of his hard-won dependability as an actor. The impression he made as Buck Barrow lit a fire under his career, one that fanned out four years later when he starred in The French Connection and won the Academy Award for his performance as the obsessive cop Popeye Doyle, a job that he has often cited as something less than his favorite. Hackman's admiring notices in this period are full of tributes to his "anonymity" and lack of sex appeal; it was as if everyone was glad that he was getting treated by the casting office as if he were a star but wanted to get their personal disavowals of responsibility on the record in anticipation of the day when the world realized that a terrible mistake had been made. But Hackman remained a genuine movie star, a testament to the surprising fact that every once in a while, exceptional ability and hard work just seem to pay off.

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My friends, last week in this space we paid tribute to the Top 10 films of the late, lamented Paul Newman, one of our favorite movie stars of all time...which, not surprisingly, got us thinking about the very qualities that separate the film industry’s classic, iconic Leading Men – the true gods of the silver screen – from, say, Shia LaBeouf.

My friends, I ask you: what is that special something, that ephemeral je nes sais quoi that makes for a truly great Leading Man? Is it talent?  Sex appeal?  Box office clout?  Are we drawn more to the stars who remind us of ourselves or those who embody exactly the qualities we lack (but do our best to imitate in hopes of meeting girls)?  Do the off-screen good deeds and/or drunken racist ranting and/or pro-Xenu proselytizing of the men behind the movies matter?  Do we forgive the occasional bombs and missteps in a long, prolific career, or do we prefer a shorter resume packed with performances of a generally higher quality?  And do foreigners count?

My friends, these difficult questions led to much consternation and debate within the hallowed halls of The Screengrab...but in the end, we all came together as a website, setting aside our individual differences to bring you this historic document, our bipartisan, multilateral picks for THE TOP 25 LEADING MEN OF ALL TIME!

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Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

Last time we looked at Dark Age, about a giant crocodile on the loose Down Under. This week we’re looking at Razorback, which is about a giant wild boar on the loose Down Under. Totally different thing! I almost felt sorry for the big croc – he just wanted to be left alone. The razorback, on the other hand, just seems like kind of an asshole.

Plotwise, the movie is your basic Jaws in the Outback.

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Jean-Luc Godard once said that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 had surely done its part in getting George W. Bush re-elected. You may disagree, but if an investigating committee of impartial wise men were formed to rank every statement of a political nature that Godard has ever issued in descending order of just how deranged they sound, it's doubtful that the sneer at Moore would make the top hundred. (Maybe not the top five hundred.) Moore said back in 2004 that he hoped that his movie would have an effect on the election, and maybe it did. (How he though that he might inspire some effect that was hurtful to Bush by making a movie specifically designed to comfort those who already agreed with him one-hundred percent while confusing anyone on the fence and pissing off and galvanizing everyone on the other side is a question for a different investigating committee of impartial wise men.) To hear them tell it, David Zucker and the other conservative Hollywood players who worked on An American Carol would like to have an impact on this year's election but are having trouble breaking through that gosh-darn media filter. Zucker, who will probably always be best known, especially at the rate he's going, as part of the team that wrote Kentucky Fried Movie and went on to create Airplane! and the Police Squad/The Naked Gun franchise, has weighed in on political matters before. A few years ago, he produced and directed a series of political ads, including the one above, which chastises the Democrats for being too soft to dictators and terrorists, and the one below, which compares James Baker and the Iraq Study Group to Neville Chamberlain.

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Kirk Cameron is a born-again Christian evangelist and former teen star who believes that God sometimes miraculously grants the wishes of true believers. If you were Kirk Cameron and had some kind of movie career, you might believe it too. Those who were children or just had no lives during the 1980s may remember Cameron from the Alan Thicke sitcom Growing Pains. It was during the run of that series that Cameron, already well-established as the show's meal ticket, discovered religion and reportedly started throwing his weight around backstage, demanding script revisions when he was unhappy with their "moral content" and even sparking a rumor that he had a hand in the dismissal of a supporting cast member who had posed nude. (He also chose not to invite any members of his "TV family" to his wedding, a slight that he later apologized for.) In 1989, Cameron starred in a major feature film about heroic college debaters who appear before the Supreme Court and make an unanswerable argument against legalized abortion. (The film was called Listen to Me. Last year, when director Kasi Lemmons made a movie about a black ex-con turned radio DJ who connects with Washington, D.C. audiences and helps counsel them through the travails of the 1960s and early 1970s, it was called Talk to Me. In a comparison of the two titles, one might detect the key difference in conservative and liberal pop culture, in a nutshell.) Since that film bombed, Cameron has mostly focused on "Christian-themed" projects: he starred in the movie versions of the Left Behind books. Now he's starring in a new movie, Fireproof, "about a firefighter who saves his marriage by turning to God." As Julie Bloom reports in The New York Times, it was made for $500,000 by "an almost all-volunteer cast and crew" and in two weeks has made more than twelve million dollars. Miracles are breaking out all over.

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