The Screengrab

Unwatchable #96: “Track of the Moon Beast”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:30:00 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.

As was the case with Devil Fish, this low-budget 1976 tale of reptilian horror has made its way onto the Bottom 100 list courtesy of its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I suspected this would become a recurring problem, and that appears to be the case. (I’m not 100% certain only because I’m not peeking too far ahead on the master list. You see, I view the Unwatchable series as a major league baseball team views its season. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You’ve got to take it one game at a time, lest ye be overwhelmed by the insurmountable odds of achieving your goal. In this case, my odds are roughly equivalent to those of the Washington Nationals.)

I find the MST3K situation problematic for several reasons. In a strange way, the presence of movies that have been eviscerated on that show taints the purity of the Bottom 100 list. If you voted for Devil Fish or Track of the Moon Beast because you happened to see them at the drive-in or on late night television, fine. But I’m betting most people who voted for them did so because the MST3K crew pre-approved them as bad movies. Who among us can say we have seen Track of the Moon Beast as it was meant to be seen, without robots cracking wise in the foreground? Not me. But in the future, I will do my best to obtain and view non-MST3K versions of the movies on the list. That is my Unwatchable vow.

The second problem is, of course, that all the jokes to be made about Track of the Moon Beast have already been made. You might think there’s an unlimited amount of humor to be derived from the story of a man who gets a shard of meteorite imbedded in his skull which causes him to turn into a giant lizard. But you would be wrong. And the MST3K gang likewise drained every possible laugh from the name of the victim’s faithful Indian companion, Johnny Longbow. And what can I possibly add that would bring any additional mirth to the line uttered by the hotpants-clad love interest of the were-lizard: “Come on, Johnny Longbow – I’d like to see you live up to your name.” Not a thing, I confess.

One interesting thing – OK, the only interesting thing – about Track of the Moon Beast is that is was co-written by Bill Finger, the writer of many early Batman comics. It’s the one and only directorial effort by Richard Ashe, who takes a very small budget and does very little with it. The one eye-catching image in the movie comes in the first two minutes, when a big creepy, shiny mask appears before our hero in the desert. (It turns out to be a prank played by two of Professor Longbow’s mischievous students.) The only genuinely scary scene is the sudden, unexplained appearance of a country-rock singer in the mold of Keith Carradine from Nashville. There are low-budget horror movies that use their lack of resources to their advantage in creating a dank, grubby mood of despair, and then there are those with crappy rubber lizard suits. This is one of the latter.

Previously on Unwatchable:

97. Bolero
98. Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor
99. The Honeymooners
100. Devil Fish

Digging Up Max Shreck, the Screen's Original Dracula

Phil Nugent — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Some actors who have had success playing Dracula, such as Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, have gone through periods where they must have wondered if they'd ever get the chance to play anything else. Max Shreck, who starred in the first (unauthorized) film adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel, F. W. Murnau's gloriously contaminated 1922 silent horror poem Nosferatu, shook off the role easily in life, but posterity has boiled his career down to this one role. Shreck, who worked in the German theater and was part of Max Reinhardt's company in Berlin before making his film debut 1920 and died of a heart attack in 1936, when he was only 56 years old. Because he left behind no other film work as important as Nosferatu--his follow-up collaboration with Murnau, a comedy called Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs, was a bomb--and because he appeared in Nosferatu in a grotesque, rodent-like make-up that rendered his features unrecogniable, the passage of time has given Shreck the reputation of a man of mystery. The 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire, starring John Malkovich as Murnau, was a darkly comic fantasy in which it was revealed that "Shreck" was an actual vampire (played by Willem Dafoe) that the director had brought in to lend his authenticity to the role. It was rooted in a film-scholar in-joke that went back decades.

Now a German author, Stefan Eickhoff, has written the first biography of the actor, Max Schreck -- Gespenstertheater ("Ghost Theater"). For some of us, the first shocking revelation is that Max Shreck's real name was...Max Shreck. Because the name "Shreck" happens to also be the German word for "fear", it became a constant in books about horror movies that "Max Shreck" was obviously a gimmick name created just for this one movie. There was even speculation that the pseudonym concealed not some obscure performer but a famous actor hidden in the jagged-toothed, pointy-eared makeup. In fact, Schreck was neither a superstar in a Halloween mask nor a one-shot found object; he was a working actor who appeared in more than twenty-five films after Nosferatu but whose early death and undistinguished filmography would have consigned him to posthumous obscurity were it not for his one classic movie role. The miracle is that Nosferatu is the one film he made that was, by legal edict, supposed to be lost; all copies were ordered destroyed as part of a settlement with the Bram Stoker estate. Of the new book, Eickhoff says that "Whoever hopes to discover a vampire will be disappointed, but they will find an actor of real skill and versatility."

Yesterday's Hits: Fatal Attraction (1987, Adrian Lyne)

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Whenever I describe the idea of Yesterday’s Hits to someone who’s never read the column, I’m often asked, “why write about movies that aren’t popular anymore?” There are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest has always been a kind of anthropological fascination with the movies to which earlier generations gravitated. In some cases, the reasons behind the films’ blockbuster status are simple- because they craved good special effects, or because the stars were popular at the time. But in some cases, it goes deeper than that, because the film taps into a certain zeitgeist that makes it a must see. Simply put, it’s the right film at the right time. One example of this is Fatal Attraction.

What made Fatal Attraction a hit?: The 1980s were a profitable period for R-rated movies, and one of the prime beneficiaries of this was the erotic thriller genre. But while most movies of this kind were fairly disreputable, Fatal Attraction was different- a classy project pairing bankable leading man Michael Douglas with three-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close. Because of its pedigree, Fatal Attraction was able to attract a bigger audience than most films of the kind, becoming the second-biggest hit of 1987.

However, the film’s success was bigger than box-office grosses, with its title entering the popular lexicon. This was due in no small part to the way its screenplay (penned by James Dearden) tapped into two major issues of the day. First, after the advent of feminism, there was a certain degree of anxiety among many men about these newly independent and sexually powerful women, exemplified in the film by Glenn Close’s Alex. But also important- although less explicit in the film- was the sudden fear of sex which was caused by the discovery of AIDS earlier in the decade. Suddenly, the casual sex of the sixties and seventies carried with it deadly consequences. These two factors combined to make Fatal Attraction a topic of national conversation, with the film garnering six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Not bad for a project that had repeatedly been dismissed as a ripoff of Play Misty for Me and passed on by almost twenty filmmakers, including Brian DePalma and John Carpenter.

What happened?: While Fatal Attraction transcended the genre to which it ostensibly belonged, its box-office performance paved the way for an explosion of erotic thrillers, few of which were remotely as good, and almost none of which were as respectable. Most of the films that were made in its wake were sleazy and shameless, with filmmakers like screenwriter Joe Eszterhas aiming to outdo each other for kinky sexuality and elaborate deaths. In addition, there was a rise in direct-to-video erotic thrillers at the end of the eighties, occasioned in part by the home-video success of Fatal Attraction. For both of these reasons, and others besides, the erotic thriller genre had largely become a parody of itself even before Carl Reiner made his dire spoof Fatal Instinct in 1993.

Does Fatal Attraction still work?: Mostly, yes. For a movie of this kind, Fatal Attraction is pretty low-key for most of its duration. Dearden and director Adrian Lyne take time to properly establish the film’s characters and story rather than simply barreling through to the sex and violence. From the beginning, the film portrays Dan Gallagher’s (Douglas) life in detail- his beautiful wife Beth (Anne Archer), his little girl, his job as a high-powered lawyer, and his close friendships. It’s not until after we see what his everyday life is like that the film throws Alex into the mix, which allows us to see what he has before he does something that could cause him to lose it.

It’s because of this that the casting of Douglas is crucial. Most big stars of the period specialized in uncomplicated heroes, but Douglas was the exception, often playing flawed yuppie types with a dark side. Fatal Attraction gave him the one of his best roles, as a decent man who is almost done in by his arrogance- he cheats on his wife because he knows he’ll have fun, and he figures he’ll never get caught anyway, so where’s the harm? But of course, he does.

Also important is Close’s performance as Alex, who’s crazy all right, but also says some things that make a good amount of sense. After Dan unceremoniously dumps her, she calls him on it, saying he treats her like “some slut you can just bang a couple of times and throw in the garbage.” After she finds out she’s pregnant, she seeks him out and demands that he “accept his responsibilities.” Alex has her share of problems- she’s suicidal, for one thing- but most of her actions in the film’s first half are actually pretty reasonable. She’s been wronged, she’s pissed, and now she will. Not. Be. Ignored.

The first hour or so of Fatal Attraction works so well as a morality play, with Dan trying to figure out how to shake off Alex while dealing with his own guilt and keeping the truth from his wife, that it’s sort of disappointing when it moves into more traditional thriller territory. Some of the film’s most famous sequences- the boiled bunny, the kidnapping- still pack a punch, but they don’t fit very well with what came before. Mostly though, it feels too easy to turn Alex into a psycho. By making her a villain, it provides an easy opportunity for Dan to emerge as a hero working in the interest of protecting his family and saving his marriage. Compared to what came before, it’s far too tidy.

Especially damaging is the film’s climactic scene, in which Alex brandishes a butcher knife and tries to murder Beth. In Dearden’s original ending, Alex committed suicide in a manner that made it appear Dan had killed her, which led to him being arrested for her murder. However, after disastrous test screenings, the studio shot the new ending, which tested much better. But while turning Alex into a knife-wielding slasher helped the film’s box office, it hurt it quality-wise. With its original ending, not only do all of the Madame Butterfly references suddenly make sense, but the film becomes far more about Dan having to deal with the consequences of his affair and less about providing clear-cut violent catharsis for the audience. Sadly, a move like this is all too typical of Hollywood- so short-sighted that they’ll gladly torpedo a future classic in the interest of making the movie more bankable today. Of course, this is what made Fatal Attraction so ideal for Yesterday’s Hits. Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?

And Fredo Is the Green Party

Phil Nugent — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Have you been sitting there staring at CNN thinking, I wish someone would translate the political debates of the day into terms I can understand, such as classic '70s movies? Good news! In an article in the journal National Interest, John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell use The Godfather and the conflicting approaches suggested for dealing with the threat from Sollozzo and the Tataglia family to explain the thought processes of what the authors identify as tht three main currents of American geopolitical thought following September 11, 2001. It is Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), the consigliere and family diplomat, whp represents "liberal institutionalism"; his mantra is "we oughta talk to them." "First, like many modern Democrats," write the authors, "Tom believes that the family’s main objective should be to return as quickly as possible to the world as it existed before the attack. His overriding strategic aim is the one that Hillary Clinton had in mind when she wrote in a recent Foreign Affairs article of the need for America to 'reclaim its proper place in the world.'” He butts heads with Sonny the hothead, who is the voice of neoconservatism, brandishing a big stick and quick to accuse anyone who expresses a lack of enthusiasm for seeing him swing it of disloyalty to the family. When Tom offers advice and counsel, Sonny (James Caan) replies that there is only one thing of value that Tom can offer: "Just help me win." As the authors see it, "Sonny’s damn-the-torpedoes approach belies a deep-seated fear that the only way to reestablish the family’s dominance is to eradicate all possible future threats to it. While such a strategy makes emotional sense following the attempted hit on his father, it runs counter to the long-term interests of the family."

Fortunately, we still have Michael (Al Pacino) to arrive at a compromise alternative to namby=pamby compromise and kneejerk aggression. "Michael has no formulaic fixation on a particular policy instrument. Instead, his overriding goal is to protect the family’s interests and save it from impending ruin by any and all means necessary. In today’s foreign-policy terminology, Michael is a realist. Viewing the world through untinted lenses, he sees that the age of dominance the family enjoyed for so long under his father is ending. Alone among the three brothers, Michael senses that a shift is underway toward a more diffuse power arrangement, in which multiple power centers will jockey for position and influence. To survive and succeed in this new environment, Michael knows the family will have to adapt." So he marshals his forces, considers his options, and the next thing you know, bada-bing, Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey have been duly adapted to the new realities. Not the least of the many things to love about this essay is that it essentially describes the current administration and its enablers as "yearning for the moral clarity" of a fictional Mafia organization. But what we want to know is, does this mean that Crawford, Texas is the new Lake Tahoe?

Mother of Uma Thurman Stalker Issues a Plea for Understanding

Phil Nugent — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:10:00 GMT

Anemona Hartocollis interviews the mother of Jack Jordan, the man convicted last week of stalking Uma Thurman. Beth Jordan, 64, met her husband, Thomas, a nuclear physicist, almost fifty years ago in Baltimore. They had nine children, including two that were still born; Jack was raised as "the fifth of eight", including "his sister's child, being raised by their parents" in their Maryland home. School friends remember Jack Jordan as popular, funny, and charismatic. “His entire life he’s been called perfect," recalls his mother. "He was like a golden, beautiful boy-man." But he went through a radical change when he was 25. He underwent a physical transformation losing weight after switching to a vegan diet; a University of Chicago pre-med student who aspired to become a neurosurgeon before abandoning his studies, he started working exclusively at menial jobs; and then there were the "hallucinations that he was talking to Jesus and Muhammad." Before that, Mrs. Jordan thought there was something wrong with her son, as he began to withdraw and lose his competitive nature and seem to starve himself. But she was unable to get anyone to heed her concerns: “You know, who listens to the momma?”

Mrs. Jordan is now addressing her feelings to the public in an effort to get her son the medical help he needs, as opposed to a prison sentence. "She had seen him thrive while taking Lexapro, an antidepressant, even going to graduate school for six months, she said. And she had also seen him with his tongue hanging out, unable to stop pacing, after she and his father had him committed in 2005 to a county psychiatric facility, where he was forcibly injected with drugs. 'I just want people to know how normal Jack was,' Mrs. Jordan said, 'and how normal he was for that period of time, being treated with Lexapro.' ” Jack himself refuses to admit that he needs help, and his parents are concerned that he himself would insist on prison over hospitalization if the choice were left to him. Jack Jordan, now 37, began stalking Thurman during the filming of the 2007 My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

A “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” By Any Other Name

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In Jack Mathews’ book The Battle of Brazil, which recounts Terry Gilliam’s struggle to get his director’s cut of Brazil released by Universal Pictures, the author reprints a list of alternative titles the Universal suits presented to Gilliam. Apparently they felt Brazil was confusing or misleading – after all, the movie didn’t take place in Brazil, and they certainly didn’t want to give audiences the wrong impression. And you can certainly see how these titles would have proved clearer and more appealing to the masses: If Osmosis, Who Are You?, Explanada Fortunata Is Not My Real Name, The Girl in the House on the Truck That's on Fire, and my all-time favorite, Gnu Yak, Gnu Yak and Other Bestial Places.

The point is, choosing the title of a movie can be a multi-million dollar decision, as Josh Friedman reports in the L.A. Times. It’s so important, there’s even a consulting firm called TitleDoctors, started by marketing consultants Seth Lockhart and Jamil Barrie. Imagine, this is a job you can have – meeting with movie executives and presenting them with a list of old song titles you think would be a perfect fit for their new romantic comedy or crime drama.

“Getting studios to agree on a name change is never easy (none of the titles for the 13 films Lockhart and Barrie consulted on during their first year in business has been adopted),” Friedman writes. “Filmmakers and production executives can become enamored of a movie's ‘working’ title. And studios may have already invested millions in marketing a project under a particular name, making it financially costly to alter.”

Some title changes are for the best; it’s hard to imagine Annie Hall achieving classic status under its original moniker Anhedonia, after all, and if you’re making a comedy about a pampered pocket dog from the 90210, you might as well call it Beverly Hills Chihuahua. But as Friedman points out, audiences are likely to flock to Hancock as much as they would the proposed alternate titles Heroes Never Die and Less Than Hero. And it’s probably for the best that the original title, Tonight, He Comes was jettisoned. As star Will Smith told Entertainment Weekly, ““You don’t want your movie to already have the porno title.”

Godzilla at Fifty: PopMatters Blows Out the Candles

Phil Nugent — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

PopMatters celebrates Godzilla's fiftieth birthday with a jam-packed "special section" on the radioactive thunder lizard's oevure and cultural legacy. Thomas Molesky and Brian Ruh fill in the historical context; Steven Luc examines Godzilla's ability to be all things to all people; Mark Pyzyk ponders the levels of "self-loathing" that drive audiences to cheer the big fella on as he confounds our military and flattens our cities; Tobias Peterson and Will Harris wonder how he got so cute; Bill Gibron addresses the criticisms leveled by Mystery Science Theater 3000 that "the surly superstar from the land of the rising sun really coasted through a great many of his later films."

In the opening essay, Mike Ward tracks what a long, strange trip it's been through the chronology of Japanese Godzilla films, from the atomic-devastation metaphors of the original Gojira, as hia mama named him, to the self-conscious mythology addressed three decades later in Godzilla 1985, in which Godzilla is compared, by a scientist, to "a living nuclear weapon" and described by reporter "Steve Martin" (Raymond Burr) as nature's way of reminding us "how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla." Writes Ward: "Maybe in Godzilla's case, overtly stating the theme is the same as contradicting it. If, in his unknowability, Godzilla stands in for the inexpressible horror of the atomic bomb, then expressing this metaphor outright — he's a 'living nuclear weapon' — robs it of its force. This is why mysterious quantities like the Oxygen Destroyer are no longer needed to defeat him. A volcano is now Godzilla's equal; which puts him into a known category, along with tornadoes and earthquakes. Godzilla is just another disaster." With so much to chew on, PopMatters could have been allowed to simply ignore perhaps the biggest disaster ever to tarnish Gojira's name, but instead, Ward addresses it head on, directly and succinctly: "Toho Productions' Godzilla could whip Roland Emmerich's Godzilla back to the Jazz Age."

DVD Digest for May 13, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: two new Criterion DVDs, the comeback effort of a master filmmaker, and the Chairman of the Board all compete for your DVD dollar. Who will win? Why, DVD buyers, of course!

DVD of the Week: For sheer comprehensiveness, nothing can touch Warner’s 22-film, 5-box-set tribute to the one and only Frank Sinatra. For all of Sinatra’s success as a recording artist, he was also a talented actor, given the right role, and this week sees the release of a number of his finest films. Among these are his Oscar-nominated performance in Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm and Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running, both of which are included in the Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years box set. But if you prefer Sinatra the fresh-faced young crooner, check out Frank Sinatra: The Early Years, which includes such early-career titles as Step Lively, It Happened in Brooklyn, and The Kissing Bandit. Or see Sinatra match his pipes with Gene Kelly’s nimble feet in The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection, comprised of the classic musicals On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and Anchors Aweigh. And if special features are your thing, there’s always The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which finds the Chairman at his least inspired vehicles but leaves plenty of room for gawking at swingin’ celebrities of yore. Heck, Warner is even releasing 1993’s miniseries Sinatra on DVD this week, in case you want your Sinatra without all that Sinatra. All that’s missing is Sinatra’s two most acclaimed films, The Manchurian Candidate and From Here to Eternity. But I’m guessing you already own those, right?

As previously mentioned, this week also brings the release of two brand-spankin' new Criterions, Louis Malle’s The Lovers and The Fire Within. Also of note in classics on DVD: The Big Trail: Fox Grandeur Special Edition; the Godard double-feature of La Chinoise (Kino) and Le Gai Savoir; a new edition of Anthony Mann’s Man of the West (Fox); Saturday Night Live: The Complete Third Season (Universal); and the Fox Western Classics Collection, which includes the new-to-DVD titles Garden of Evil, Rawhide, and The Gunfighter. And in shameless cash-in news, this week brings new DVDs of all three Indiana Jones films, with a few added extra features so that buyers won’t feel completely ripped off.

In more recent films, today brings the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (Sony, also Blu-Ray), his first official directorial effort in a decade. The film was generally regarded as a critical and popular disaster, but I found it fascinating- flawed to be sure, but intriguingly so- and I believe it’ll finally be appreciated for what it is on DVD. Also this week: Diane Lane in Untraceable (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in Mad Money (Anchor Bay); and the French horror film Frontier(s) (Lionsgate). The other major new release this week is the DVD debut of The Animation Show 3 (Paramount), last year’s touring program of animated shorts presented by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. The DVD includes Hertzfeldt’s latest masterpiece Everything will be OK, as well as sixteen other shorts, some of which have been added especially for the DVD release.

This week’s Blu-Ray only releases are: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Fox); Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Fox); Mrs. Doubtfire (Fox); and just in time for this weekend’s new blockbuster, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which brings me to this week’s Huddleston corner, in which we sigh over the lonely release of Warner’s One Missed Call on HD-DVD. I mean really, guys- you’re just kidding around now, right?

Sequel to "Donnie Darko" Is on the Way, Much to the Dismay of the Creator of "Donnie Darko"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Donnie Darko (2001), the long-gestating cult hit from writer-director Richard Kelly, is about to get an ugly little brother. Or maybe a stepbrother, or just somebody who got ahold of its credit card number and is charging pizzas to its account. The planned sequel, S. Darko, begins shooting next week and is going to be shopped around at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. The film's title refers to the character of Samantha Darko, who was Donnie's sister in the original film and was played by Daviegh Chase. The plot will involve a road trip the now- eighteen-year-old Samantha takes with a friend, a trip that becomes complicated when they begin to experience "bizarre visions." (Spoiler alert: Donnie himself, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, did not survive the conclusion of the first film.) Daveigh Chase will reprise her role in the new film, and that's as close as it has to an actual, breathing connection to the original Donnie Darko. The $10-million production will be directed by Chris Fisher, who directed and co-wrote Dirty, a crooked-cop drama starring Cuba Cooding, Jr., and horror flicks about real-life murderers Richard ("Night Stalker") Ramirez and the Hillside Strangler. Fisher says that "I am a great admirer of Richard Kelly's film and hope to create a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality." Simon Crowe, of the production company Velvet Octopus, chimes in: "I think there is a new generation of cinema-goers who will be very excited to see this film."

Whatever generation he has in mind, it does not appear that Richard Kelly is among their number. Cinemascope reports on Kelly's official reaction: "Over the last couple of days, a few people have asked me what’s up with 'this Donnie Darko sequel.' So to set the record straight, here’s a few facts I’d like to share with you all - I haven’t read this script. I have absolutely no involvement with this production, nor will I ever be involved. I have no control over the rights from our original film, and neither I nor my producing partner Sean McKittrick stand to make any money from this film." Reaction from fans has been swift, too: there's already a petition on-line devoted to shutting the damn thing down. (Quick, somebody call Sprite Gum!) It's not exactly the first time that some hack has threatened to grind out a string of sausage movies "based" on an original that deserves to be treated with more respect. (Can you say The Stepfather II: Father's Day?) But it's definitely a cheeky move to try this sort of thing with such a beloved art-cult object, especially given how long it took for Richard Kelly himself to start reaping some benefits from Donnie Darko itself. Or, as Cinemascope's Peter Sciretta puts in, in a line worthy of Dr. Van Helsing: "damn the buyers that will pour money [into] what seems on the outset as a blasphemous and disrespectful project".

Keira Knightley Wants to Be an Actress When She Grows Up

Phil Nugent — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

You want to talk about life experiences? Keira Knightley is twenty-three years old and has already starred in three very long movies based on a Disney theme park ride. "I mean, it was really fucking embarrassing and we all thought it was going to be total shit anyway," she told Matthew Rhys. "But then suddenly I was kissing Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and bang, there you go, instant bloody stardom. I'd always wanted to be an actress, always dreamt of it, but I don't think you're ever quite prepared for being a movie star." Maybe not, but it's probably a good sign that she recognizes that the two positions are not the same, though they sometimes overlap. "I know that when Bend it like Beckham came out and it was quickly followed by Pirates, suddenly people were looking at me and thinking, 'Well she's not very good, she's just a pretty face, don't know what all the fuss is about'. But I wasn't really ready to be scrutinised. I wasn't any good at my job yet. But with Pride and Prejudice, yes, I was at least trying to say: look, see, I can learn, and I can do this, or at least give me the right director and I'll give it my best shot. So since those first films, I've always been looking to be stretched - it doesn't always mean I'm going to be good, but I'm trying to become a good actress, really I am."

Knightley, whose acting in the Jane Austen picture and for that matter in Bend It Like Beckham the Pirates movies was actually pretty good, really it was, is growing up, and she'll soon be seen playing the "childhood sweetheart" of Dylan Thomas (Cillian Murphy) in "a very sexy piece", The Edge of Love. (Sienna Miller co-stars as Thomas's wife, who is presumably the edge of the title.) The role called for her to do a little singing, and to help psych herself up for it, she turned to Marlene Dietrich, "She couldn't really sing, not properly, but she had such a ballsy, fuck-off quality to her voice that it didn't matter if she hit the right notes, so I thought well I'll try that approach." Dude, Keira Knightley just said "ballsy, fuck-off quality." Can youn imagine what she's going to sound like after she's had a couple of husbands and stints in rehab behind her? Honestly, if more Hollywoos starlets woulf talk this way in interviews instead of saving it for the hired help, it would make it so much easier to forgive so much.

Video(s) of the Day: Short Films by Guy Maddin

Paul Clark — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Earlier today, I posted the trailer for Guy Maddin’s latest feature, entitled My Winnipeg. So it seemed like as good an excuse as any to revisit two of Maddin’s best-known short films. First, here’s his 2000 masterpiece The Heart of the World, which was originally commissioned for the Toronto Film Festival that year and ended up being one of the most raved-about films of the fest, short or otherwise. It’s a Soviet-style epic in miniature, full of grandiose camera angles and plenty of phallic imagery, and climaxing in an orgasmic celebration of… well, see for yourself:

Now, from the sublime to the oh-so-ridiculous, here’s Maddin’s infamous 1995 short Sissy Boy Slap Party. While hardly a masterful work like The Heart of the World, it’s still a lot of fun, and just as un-PC as the title would suggest. Check it out:

All-Night Mockbuster Marathon

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT

It’s time for another all-night marathon, so put on a pot of coffee, find the sweet spot on the couch and join me for a nocturnal journey into the shadowy world of the mockbuster. (If you’re not sure what a mockbuster is, here’s a handy primer.)

12 midnight. We begin with the latest mockbuster from the good people at the Asylum, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Lost Skulls. I’ll bet you can guess which blockbuster-in-waiting occasioned the release of this one. Although the character of Allan Quatermain actually predates the creation of Indiana Jones by nearly a century, his reappearance now is a case of history repeating itself. Temple of Skulls is based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines, as was the 1985 film starring Richard Chamberlain, a mockbuster before they had a word for it. (Back then, we charitably called it a Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff.) This doesn’t stop the producers from claiming that Allan Quatermain inspired Indiana Jones, which is partially true but certainly misleading in this context. In any case, there is no temple of skulls in the movie, so you can bet it was retitled once Lucasfilm announced the name of the latest Indiana Jones flick. Anyway, as Temple of Skulls begins, two rugged prospector types in South Africa find the map to King Solomon’s mines. Not trusting each other, they split it in half to ensure they’ll stick together. Shortly thereafter they are attacked by Zulus and the map pieces blow away. Some time later, rugged great white hunter Quatermain (Sean Michael) gets his hands on one half.

12:20 am. I’m trying to figure out when this movie is set. We’ve got coal-burning trains, ladies in frilly frocks, black dudes in hip-hop hats and Nazi references. So I guess…some time in the last 70 years or so? Anyway, Quatermain has teamed up with Sir Henry and Lady Anna, a wealthy couple with the other half of the map. They are being pursued by Quatermain’s arch-nemesis, a scenery chewer straight out of an old Hammer horror movie.

12:30 am. Here we have a five-mile-an-hour chase between a truck and a locomotive engine. It’s like someone stuck a Monty Python sketch in the middle of the movie.

12:45 am. Our heroes dodge CGI bugs, then encounter a (real) rhino. This scene is edited Survivor-style; we have no idea if the rhino is even in the same hemisphere as Quatermain and the gang.

1:00 am. In fine National Geographic tradition, Quatermain and company are captured by bare-breasted natives. There is a bizarre CGI Zulu head-removal ritual.

1:15 am. I was expecting pretty much constant action and zero plot from Temple of Skulls, but that’s not actually the case. For all I know, it’s a reasonably faithful adaptation. I must give the Asylum credit for scenery at least; the movie is purty to look at.

1:40 am. Let us move on to King of the Lost World, another literary adaptation posing as a recent blockbuster. It’s loosely based on A. Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, with the addition of “King” to the title and a picture of a big scary ape on the cover to fool drunk people at Blockbuster into renting it. The box also trumpets an appearance by Bruce Boxleitner – star of Scarecrow and Mrs. King! Well, that’ll bring the kids into the tent. Anyway, King opens with a plane crashing onto an island, announcing its intentions to rip off not only King Kong and Jurassic Park but also Lost. This is confirmed when we see a stewardess trapped up in a tree. Three minutes into the movie, a giant gorilla snatches her. We won’t be seeing him again for a while.

2:00 am. Giant bug attack!

2:10 am. There’s a glitch in the DVD and I have to jump ahead five minutes, at which point maggots are being used to heal a woman’s wound. So glad I didn’t miss that.

2:25 am. Our heroes find a fighter jet with an active nuke. The mysterious Bruce Boxleitner knows how to hot-wire it.

2:40 am. Things are happening now! One dude gets impaled by a giant scorpion. The others are taken hostage by skull-face painted natives. There are boobies! And lesbian natives!

2:50 am. A flurry of terrible CGI: we’ve got pterodactyls, plus the giant ape finally returns, though he looks blurry and pixilated. (Another reason CGI must die: think about how much progress in giant robot ape technology could have been made by now.) Boxleitner reveals he was sent to disarm the nuke, which really makes no sense, especially once he explains that the bomb has a limited range of 300 yards. Anyway, they blow up the ape real good. Okay, I’m lying. It’s not real good.

3:00 am. It’s time for The Da Vinci Treasure. Here’s how you know these folks at the Asylum aren’t completely shameless: the film concerns a forensic archeologist and his search for the Da Vinci codex. See – they could have called this The Da Vinci Codex! Maybe they didn’t quite have the grapes for that (though they did make The Transmorphers, unreviewed here – I’ve got my limits too, junior.)

3:15 am. Anyway, the main players here are a haggard C. Thomas Howell as our hero Michael Archer, an earring-sporting Lance Henriksen as the villainous Dr. John Coven, and Nicole Sherwin as your typically hot linguist/theologian. Throughout the movie, director Peter Mervis (Snakes on a Train) employs an annoying effect that kept making me think there was something wrong with my DVD player. It’s a sort of freeze-frame/flash/jumpcut deal – like someone mentions Jesus, and suddenly there’s a flash of light, a whoosh, quick shots of a crucifix and the Last Supper, and then back to the scene. I guess this pumps up the excitement level, as if looking for hidden clues on the Shroud of Turin weren’t exciting enough!

3:20 am. We have our first mention of the Knights Templar! Also, the Shroud of Turin is apparently kept in the basement of the Alamo.

3:30 am. And Da Vinci invented 3-D glasses, in case you were wondering.

3:45 am. In what must be the most expensive scene in any of these Asylum movies, there is a smash-em-up car chase through the streets of London (or San Diego, whatever) involving a tour bus. Fortunately they didn’t have to pay the guy playing the Casio on the soundtrack too much.

4:15 am. Apparently I nodded off during the big revelation scene in The Da Vinci Treasure. I’m sure it changed the face of Christianity forever, but there’s no time to go back! Let’s wrap this up with an old school mockbuster to cleanse the palate, shall we? Of course I’m talking about 1988’s timeless E.T. ripoff, Mac and Me. We begin on another planet, where a family of aliens is accidentally sucked into the vacuum hose of a rover from Earth. The aliens, I guess, are meant to be cute, but to me they look like giant sea monkeys or very confused burn victims.

4:30 am. After the alien family is brought to Earth, the smallest alien, or Mysterious Alien Creature, or MAC (you see?), hitches a ride with a single mother and her two sons moving to California. They don’t notice him, but he keeps getting into mischief, and the youngest, wheelchair-bound brother Eric keeps getting blamed for it.

4:45 am. Eric plummets off a cliff in his wheelchair and is rescued by Mac. When he tells the doctor what happened, the doc diagnoses him with “schizofreakia” and decides to dope him up. Ah, the 80s.

5:00 am. Breakdancing! At McDonald’s! With Ronald McDonald and football players and – don’t take my word for it, see for yourself:

5:15 am. By now everyone believes Mac exists, and they help reunite him with his family members, who are trapped in a mineshaft out by those windmills from Rain Man. The kids nurse the aliens back to life with nourishing sips of Coca-Cola. I tell ya, this movie is Morgan Spurlock’s worst nightmare.

5:30 am. Of course, government agents are in hot pursuit of Mac, and in their attempts to capture him they manage to blow up an entire mall and kill Eric in the process. Fortunately, Mac and his family are able to suck the death right out of him. Apparently the aliens don’t hold their ill treatment by the agents against their government, as the movie concludes with the whole family becoming U.S. citizens. A final ominous title card claims “We’ll Be Back.” We’re still waiting. And by “we,” I mean “not me.” Good night.

Previously: All-Night Bigfoot Movie Marathon

CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Plastic surgery is a good metaphor for CGI (a.k.a. "computer-generated imagery"): 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.

Hollywood has developed an unhealthy addiction to both plastic surgery and 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 play video games at Chuck E. Cheese for an endless 135 minutes.

Did Jar-Jar Binks teach us nothing? Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer a little special in my special effects: cinematic images that make me go, “Oh my God, how’d they do that?” rather than, “Dude, that reminds me of this awesome World of Warcraft battle I just posted on YouTube!”

If you’re one of the CGI addicted who think all non-pixelated movie effects are inherently “cheesy,” consider the following clips an intervention as we here at the Screengrab present five examples of amazing movie moments that had (almost) nothing to do with computer-generated imagery.

Just about any Buster Keaton movie

See that car falling apart while Buster Keaton is driving it? See the front of that house falling and nearly crushing him? See that bridge collapsing with the train on it? All that shit actually happened in real life, not in post-production!

The Road Warrior

Why are high speed car chases with actual cars (and trucks and motorcycles and gyrocopters) better than computerized car action? Gee, I don’t know...maybe the same reason sex with an actual human being is better than internet porn?

The Thing (1982)

Sure, the shape-shifting alien action in John Carpenter’s The Thing may look as fake and unbelievable as CGI...but the viscous, tactile ooze has an icky, organic quality that's very hard to duplicate in the shiny world of greenscreen ones and zeroes.

Altered States

CGI scenes all tend to have a similar look, not unlike the legions of aging Hollywood starlets sporting “trout pout” and Spitting Image puppet faces after one too many visits to the neighborhood Botox dispensary. Directors and special effects coordinators forced to get a little more creative, however, may come up with distinctive, fucked-up and memorable images like those found in this one-of-a-kind Ken Russell phantasmagoria.

Star Wars

And speaking of tactile...one word: models. The star destroyer in the opening scene of Star Wars (along with all the nooks and crannies of all the ships in 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien) were and remain more iconic and dramatic than all the CGI pod-racers, Naboo royal cruisers or Trade Federation frigates the computers at Skywalker Ranch have ever rendered.

Don’t get me wrong. CGI has achieved some amazing things: the bullet-time sequences in The Matrix, Gollum and that buck naked Angelina Jolie in Beowulf. But enough is enough, people. It’s time for Hollywood to go cold turkey.

For the betterment of all humanity...CGI Must Die.

Mike Tyson Speaks: Lend Him an Ear

Phil Nugent — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

“I love addicts. I love these guys. That’s the people I want to be around. You know, former users. And I think that’s really crazy.”That's Mike Tyson talking to Tim Arango in The New York Times. Now 41 and, one assumes, or maybe hopes, Tyson still has his own peculiar addictions, and one of them seems to be to the filmmaker James Toback. Tyson supplied Toback with the most memorable scene of his 2000 improvisational jam session Black and White when he turned up as himself in a party scene and gets cruised by Robert Downey, Jr., a scene that ends with the unnerved Tyson ("I'm on parole, brother, please") ringing Downey's bell. (After Downey goes down, Brooke Shields, playing his wife, rushes over to see if he's all right, and then she hits on Tyson. "“They say I raped a woman,” Iron Mike tells her politely. “They put me in the penitentiary. I don’t need no white bitch coming on to me.” At the time, there was some indication that Tyson was unhappy with how he came across onscreen and felt that Toback had set him up--not an unreasonably paranoid reaction to Toback, a self-styled provocateur who likes to surround himself with celebrities and stir up some shit. But Tyson came back for an appearance in Toback's little-seen When a Man Loves a Woman, and now he's the star of Toback's new film, a documentary simply called Tyson, "which interposes interviews of Mr. Tyson conducted last year while he was in rehab, with fight clips," and which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival.

“I look at it now, and I’m embarrassed I did it,” Tyson, currently trying to keep a low profile in Las Vegas, says about the film. “There’s a lot of information people didn’t need to know.” His claims to feel shame over his past is believable. But Tyson, who spent the first half of his career easily dominating his opponents in the ring (and the second half showing a complete inability to deal with it when he could no longer easily dominate, so that he'd do anything--go down fast, aim below the belt, turn cannibal--to just make it stop) now seems to be a glutton for this kind of punishment. (He's also working on an autobiographer with a professional ghostwriter.) This focus on sifting through his past may not be entirely based on his having nothing else to peddle. He may be hoping to educate himself. “I don’t know who I am,” he told the Times. “That might sound stupid. I really have no idea. All my life I’ve been drinking and drugging and partying, and all of a sudden this comes to a stop.” Maybe that's why he likes hanging around Toback, who recalls that when they first met back in the 1980s, “somehow the subject got on to madness. I told him about an LSD experience I had as a sophomore at Harvard. We talked about losing the self, and the difference between dread and fear.” (It's too bad that Toback's movies aren't more like his interviews.) Why Toback wants to be around Tyson, in good times and bad, is less mysterious. “I didn’t know how to be any other way," Tyson says now about his free-spending, sometimes lunatic-seeming behavior when things were good, or at lest profitable. "I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire. I was crazy.”

Trailer Review: My Winnipeg

Paul Clark — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Of all the movies I wasn’t able to see at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, one of my biggest regrets was missing the latest film by Manitoba’s mad genius Guy Maddin. Of course, only part of my regret has to do with the film itself- it would have been a blast to see it narrated live by the director, who has always been a fascinating character. But the film itself, which has received almost unanimously positive reviews, should be more than compelling enough on its own. Like many of his earlier works- in particular Tales From the Gimli Hospital, Cowards Bend the Knee, and Brand Upon the Brain!- Maddin appears to be re-imagining his own childhood here through a prism of frenzied Freudian melodrama and wicked, film-saturated satire to create an unmistakably Maddin-flavored cocktail. Nice to see Ann Savage, the infamous “dame with claws” from Detour so many years ago, turn up again here as the Maddin family matriarch. I’m not sure how all of this strangeness- like a “man pageant” just around the corner from Sissy Boy Slap Party- but I’m eager to find out.

List-o-Mania: “Ten Bad Dates with De Niro”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

You know we love our lists here at the Screengrab (tune in later this week for the 10 Greatest Colostomy Bags in Movie History), but even we bow before Richard T. Kelly, creator of Ten Bad Dates with De Niro. First Kelly edited the book of that name, subtitled A Book of Alternative Movie Lists. It’s chock full of great ideas for us to steal, from “The Mighty Apoplexies Of Pacino – Ten Scenes Where ‘Shouty Al’ Shows Up” to “Capital Offences – Ten Places You Wouldn't Expect To Find A Severed Head.” It’s also got some guest stars we haven’t been able to nab so far. Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) weighs in with “A Surprising Intimacy – Ten Films That Have Interesting Sensuality,” while the Coen Brothers offer up “Ripe For Remake - Five Films We’d Like To See Remade.” (Among their choices is Koyaanisqatsi: “We have not seen the original but suspect it could be interestingly remade with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.”)

The book was only the beginning, however – Ten Bad Dates with De Niro is also a blog, complete with daily lists! Well, that’s the claim anyway; in reality, the last list was posted on February 15th (10 Favorite Roy Scheider Roles). Still, there are some items of interest to be found. For instance, “Lights! Camera! Vomit! 10 Great Up-Chucks.” We can go along with Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life edging out The Exorcist, but I’m not sure we would have thought of Husbands: “John Cassavetes somehow ennobles on screen vomiting, thus making a mockery of the genre. Still he also manages to make it kind of funny.” Truly, this is the essence of cinema.

Speed Racer Bombs! Screengrab Two For Two!

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

So, according to Perez Hilton, the $100 million jalopy Speed Racer is the "first bomb of the 'summer' box office season," with a dismal $20 million take over the weekend...and some insiders are voicing doubts that it grossed even that much.

Woo-hoo! Sad news for the Wachowski Brothers, Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Chim Chim the monkey, perhaps...but it does mean we here at the Screengrab currently have a perfect batting average with regard to our predictions for the Top 5 Hits and Misses of the 2008 Summer Movie Season.

Speed Racer was #4 on our "Miss" list, and the gazillion-dollar grossing Iron Man was #4 on our "Hit" List. The only dark cloud on our prediction horizon is the recent bad buzz about our #3 "Hit" pick.

Considering the disappointments of Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, my own expectations of Crystal Skull are already, shall we say, pretty well managed...but it remains to be seen whether or not the bad buzz translates to disappointing box office when Indiana Jones premieres on May 22.

Indiana Jones and the Internet Critics' Pre-emptive Strike: Ain't It Cool News Sandbags Spielberg and Co.

Phil Nugent — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes its official debut with a press screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, four days before it opens wide theatrically. The picture has been immersed in a protective bath of secrecy; Steven Spielberg likes his intended surprise to, you know, surprise. But, perturbingly enough, the first reviews have started trickling in, thanks to that bastion of cutthroats and jacka;s known as the Internets. The initial "quick reaction" was posted to Ain't It Cool News last Thursday evening by "ShogunMaster." The spoiler-heavy review reports that Harrison Ford "has a few lines that work and a million that don't", trashes the other performers, laments the last of tension or suspense "During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero ... was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases, you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it.. He just never shows signs of worry or distress."), and sums up the proceedings with the judgement that this is "the Indiana Movie that you were dreading."

Not having seen the movie ourselves, we have no way of verifying these claims, but the truest thing in the review (which has since been joined on the site by what Michael Cieply describes as "two other less critical, but less than sparkling, reviews") is probably its author's admission that "it doesn't matter what I say, you will see this movie regardless." Still, you have to wonder who the fellow is and how he managed to be one of the first people on Earth to see the movie. Now Cieply reports that "ShogunMaster", "reached via the Web site, said he is a theater executive who saw the film at an exhibitors’ screening this week." Cieply notes that "Such screenings are required in about two dozen states that have laws against blind-bidding, a practice in which theater owners were once asked to bid on films they had not seen. As a practical matter, there is little or no actual bidding in the contemporary theater business, which relies instead on negotiations between distributors and theater owners. But distributors continue to hold screenings for theater company executives in the weeks before a film’s release, whether as a courtesy or as a way to avoid conflict with a patchwork of state laws. Theater executives may have an incentive to play down a movie’s prospects after such a screening, to get better terms." If that's what ShogunMaster is all about--trying to dampen the perception of public enthusiasm for a sure-fire hit as a negotiating ploy--then Ain't It Cool News' participation for the sake of a scoop might threaten the good name of on-line film criticism, if it had a good name. As everybody keeps reminding me, it kind of doesn't, but still!

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 3-9, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:30:00 GMT

This was the week that was at the Screengrab:

We offered free career advice to the 21st century Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds.

We watched Nicolas Cage, Michael J. Fox and Bruce Willis debase themselves in the Five Most Embarrassing Celebrity Commercials.

We compared two versions of The Thomas Crown Affair, two versions of Lolita, and the two faces of Aaron Eckhart.

We climbed The Towering Inferno and floated down the Apocalypse Now river.

We saw a naked Bo Derek drenched in honey and milk in Bolero, the latest entry in the Unwatchable series of 100 worst movies ever.

We expressed concern for Christina Ricci, hailed Jonathan Pryce and looked forward to seeing Bardot’s ass in high definition.

We told you about the 12 Greatest Movies Based on TV Shows and you told us we forgot about Serenity. Sorry about that.

And finally, we got sweet, sweet revenge.

What a week, no?