The snowballing reputation of the Irish playwright Conor McPherson reached a peak with The Seafarer, which he directed at the National Theatre in London in 2006; last year, the Broadway production won the actor Jim Norton a Tony Award, to go with the Olivier Award he'd won the year earlier for his performance. McPherson himself has directed three feature films, the latest of which, The Eclipse, was recently picked up for distribution after playing at the Tribeca Film Festival. McPherson's first produced screenplay was for I Went Down, an Irish gangland buddy comedy that was a huge indie hit in Ireland in 1997 but achieved only measly distribution here. At that time, McPherson was an unknown quantity here, and for the most part, so were the movie's stars, Peter McDonald and Brendan Gleeson. It was the John Boorman film The General, released here the same year as I Went Down, that helped raise Gleeson's profile as everybody's favorite Irish gangster, a position he shored up last year when he co-starred with Colin Farrell in the playwright Martin McDonagh's movie writing-directing debut, In Bruges. That movie actually has a striking family resemblance to I Went Down, though I Went Down is both lighter in tone and the better, more well-sustaned movie; unlike McDonagh's, it doesn't fall off a cliff overreaching for significance.

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Paul Clark's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1. BELLE DE JOUR (1967)
2. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) 
3. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)



The greatness of The Passion of Joan of Arc stems from the fact that director Carl Th. Dreyer knew what it was that made Joan’s story important- not that she believed that God had tasked her to save France, but that she was so steadfast in her faith that she thought it better do die than to deny it. Consequently, Dreyer’s version of Joan’s story has no battle sequences and no heavenly visions, merely a powerful retelling of Joan’s final days, her trial and execution. The world of this film is an unsparing- one might say godless- one, full of evil and underhanded men who are more than willing to sacrifice Joan for their own political gain. This serves to throw into sharp relief the power of Joan’s faith, by heightening the pain and suffering she endured up to the end for the God in whom she so resolutely believed. Falconetti’s performance, then as now, is a wonder, and it’s only fitting that she never appeared onscreen again- how could she have possibly lived up to it?

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Hi, Screengrab readers!  For my first post, I thought I’d kick off a series in which I suggest various movies worth recording off of cable TV in the upcoming week.  See, I know that since you read the Screengrab, you have a fairly solid grasp on the movies and movie history, but there’s always some that slip through the cracks.  The movies I’ll mention here will give you a chance to catch up on those that you might have overlooked.  If I miss something, please post it in the comments!

Here’s the skinny: I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve gone to the trouble of getting a DVR (or have a VCR you know how to set, at the very least) to go along with the cable you pay for month after month, but you don’t always keep an eye on upcoming movies.  Since you’re reading the Screengrab, I’m not going to recommend movies that everyone recommends, such as Singin’ In The Rain (which, incidentally, I record just about every time it’s on, because I always have time to watch one of the dance numbers).  I’m not going to be too esoteric, either.  I’ll use an in-law test: I’ll stick with movies that I doubt my mother-in-law has seen, and that way will try to catch some of the great movies that are more likely to slip through the cracks.  One more thing: no premium channels, mainly because I can’t afford them.

Mon, Oct. 6:
Nothing here.  Good thing, too, since I’m not posting this until Tuesday Morning

Tues, Oct. 7: 
9:00 am: Ace In The Hole on TCM.  I don’t think this is a very good movie.  But plenty of reviewers disagree with me, so I’m going to mention it. Actually, by the time this goes live, it'll probably be too late.

8:00 pm: Don’t Look Back on VH1CL (repeating at 11:30 pm).  Maybe you’ve seen this, and maybe not.  But it’s one of the great rock documentaries and, if you watch it, you’ll enjoy I’m Not There that much more.

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HONORABLE MENTION

300 (2007)



Even relatively anti-war films like Platoon acknowledge the fierce camaraderie and euphoric adrenalin rush of warriors in combat, but this surrealistic adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about a legendary phalanx of Spartans taking on a zillion enemy warriors is all bloodlust, all the time. Yet, while historically suspect (since modern researchers are pretty sure the power-mad Persian king Xerxes didn’t really command a legion of trolls, orcs and giants from the darkest reaches of Middle Earth), and hardly on par with more serious evocations of combat (like, say, Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket), 300 is notable, like many of the best war films, as a reflection of its time. Some critics detected jingoistic echoes of George W. Bush’s “bring ‘em on” foreign policy in the refusal of Spartan badass King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) to negotiate with foreign powers, going it alone with his own Coalition of the Willing when other nations (and a cowardly Congress...er, Spartan Council) refuse to authorize war against an imminent Persian threat to democracy and freedom. Just as Nixon reportedly watched Patton over and over again before sending troops into Cambodia, it’s easy to imagine Bush viewing 300 to make himself feel better about sending American troops into combat without sufficient body armor: after all, Leonidas and his 299 BFFs take down half Xerxes’ army bare-chested!  Framed as a tale of indeterminate tallness relayed by a warrior to inspire his fellow troops on the verge of combat, the fetishized fairy tale unreality of 300’s violence, tone and (xenophobic) politics, its conflicted homophobic/homoerotic ideal of manliness, its complete surrender to (and celebration of) CGI fakery and its wild popularity and seductive guilty pleasure craftsmanship all combine into a fascinating time capsule of an age when troops compare combat to video games and the line between fact and fiction, has never seemed quite so blurry.

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CGI (or “computer-generated imagery,” Grandpa) is like plastic surgery: it works best when you’re least aware of it, adding value without calling attention to its glaring, unnatural fakery. A little and you’re marveling at the natural, age-appropriate sexiness of Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, wondering “did she or didn’t she?” with regard to nips, tucks and nose jobs.  Too much, and you’re recoiling in horror at that freakish Cat Lady lady, gasping in shock over missing noses and airbag lips, or wondering why Nicole Kidman keeps wearing that creepy Nicole Kidman mask.

Like plastic surgery, Hollywood has developed an unhealthy addiction to CGI, preferring the obviously fake to the convincingly real, whether in the form of grotesquely disproportionate rock-hard breasticles or pixilated atrocities like Speed Racer, the cinematic equivalent of watching other people's birthday brats playing video games at Chuck E. Cheese for an endless 135 minutes.

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