The Screengrab : alan ball

DVD Digest for December 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This week, the big studios drop a ton of new DVDs and Blu-Rays into the market to compete for your newly-acquired Christmas cash.

In recent releases, DVD shopping begins early this week, with three new Paramount titles: Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye (also Blu-Ray); Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town (also Blu-Ray); and Keira Knightley in The Duchess (also Blu-Ray). Today brings us Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha (Image Entertainment), as well as a “head to head” match up (sorry) between Alan Ball’s Towelhead (Warner) and the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead (Sony).

In TV on DVD, today’s new releases include The Tudors Season 2 (Paramount) and Nip/Tuck Season 5 Part 1 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s bumper crop of new Blu-Ray-only releases includes: Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Paramount); the Shining-in-space thriller Event Horizon (Paramount); Demi Moore and the Swayz in Ghost (Paramount); Queen Latifah in Last Holiday (Paramount); Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount); Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (Warner); and finally, the Browncoats’ favorite, Joss Whedon’s Serenity (Universal).

Trailer Review: Revolutionary Road

Paul Clark — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Once again, Sam Mendes turns to suburban ennui, which previously won him Oscar gold in American Beauty. But while that film had plenty of sassy (some would say snarky) humor courtesy of screenwriter Alan Ball, Revolutionary Road is pretty sober stuff. Of course, the production values look pretty impeccable here- with Roger Deakins behind the camera it’d almost have to be a great-looking movie. And given the movie’s pedigree, the filmmakers clearly have Oscar in their sights again. Who knows- this buzz could very well be warranted. But I worry that the “Leo and Kate reunited” angle perpetuated by the Hollywood hype machine could overwhelm anything else about the movie. Sure, it might put a few more asses in the seats, but in the long term I’m not sure it does the movie any good, especially when it’s quite likely that the original Titanic audience simply hasn’t grown up like its stars have.

Take Five: The Arab Movie Hall of Shame

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:30:00 GMT

The hotly anticipated release of Towelhead, the controversial Alan Ball adaptation of Alicia Erian's well-received coming of age novel about a young Arab-American girl, gives me a chance to finally feature one of my all-time favorite subjects in a Friday Take Five: the horrendous stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood films. Naturally, I'll be hitting the theaters bright and early this weekend to get my ticket to Towelhead; my hopes are high that it will do a small part to reverse the dismally one-dimensional portrayal of Arabs in cinema since the invention of the medium. (It would have been nice if they could have gotten an actual Arab-American actress to play the lead, but that's a rant for another day.) One of Thomas Edison's very first moving pictures portrayed a seductive odalisque, and ever since then, Arabs have been portrayed on screen as one of what Mazin Q'umsiyeh of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee calls "the three Bs": belly dancers, billionaires, or bombers. Since the late 1970s, when blacks made it known they were a bit tired of being Hollywood's favorite punching bag, Arabs have been killed on screen at a pace that far outstrips the slaughter of Indians in movie Westerns, and with a very few exceptions (sala'am, Tony Shalhoub), if you're an Arab in the movie business, if you don't play a terrorist, you don't work. So I'm off to the multiplex, hoping that Towelhead can start to clean up the mess made by movies like these.

BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)

Although it's one of the most beloved comedies of the '80s, Back to the Future didn't win a lot of friends in the Arab-American community for its mindless portrayal of north African terrorists. Typically, the Arab villains are portrayed as both sinister (gunning down poor old Doc Brown and, in so doing, teaching a whole generation of American kids to hiss at the swarthy bearded kaffiyeah-wearing dirtbags) and incompetent (so dumb that it took them the whole movie to figure out that they'd been sold a "shiny bomb casing filled with pinball machine parts). Worse still, that's not even the movie's biggest ethnic crime: there's that whole business of whitebread Michael J. Fox teaching black people about rock 'n' roll...

THE HITMAN (1991)

Unsurprisingly from someone who's a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary conservative, Chuck Norris has a special place in the Arab-bashing Hall of Fame; while he's probably killed more Asians on screen, it hasn't been from lack of trying to slaughter Arabs by the score. Already deserving of a hot kebab enema for his role in the Delta Force movies, Norris upped the ante considerably by appearing in this muddled gangster/terrorist picture, where he delivers one of the most racist scenes in history: confronting a group of Arab scumbags in a restaurant, he calls them "camel jockeys", spits out their food and calls it "shit", and then proceeds to slam their heads into the table after mocking their claim that Allah will protect them. Now that's good xenophobia!

IRON EAGLE (1986)

There's nothing special about this mid-'80s blow-'em-up, largely remembered today as a third-rate knockoff of Top Gun featuring some surprisingly homoerotic interaction between Lou Gossett Jr. and some wind-blown creature named Jason Gedrick. However, in many ways, it served as a blueprint for how to portray Arabs in a Hollywood movie: 1. If you have to show them at all, they should be howling, dirty-looking maniacs. 2. They all hate America and want to kill us. No reason need be given. 3. All of them are named Ali, Muhammed or Mustafa. 4. There is no particular need to even mention what country they are from -- they're all the same. 5. By the end of the movie, they should all be dead. See how easy that is? Now go make your own movies, cowboy?

THE BLACK STALLION (1979)

A well-liked children's movie based on a beloved novel, The Black Stallion is a particular disappointment because its racist depiction of Arabs gets in the way of an otherwise fine movie with some good performances and breathtaking cinematography. The movie's evil Arabs mistreat the titular stallion and then steal the boy hero's lifejacket at knifepoint (!) to save themselves; the portrayal is especially galling and cruel because in almost all Arab countries, horses are extremely well-treated and respected. In fact, the Arabian stallion the filmmakers originally hoped to use in the lead role didn't end up in the movie; its Egyptian owners were too afraid the animal would be mistreated or abused.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (2000)

Named by the ADC as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs in Hollywood", this grotesque William Friedkin actioner piles on the prejudice until your eyes practically roll out of your head. It starts off with hardboiled Marine Samuel L. Jackson facing down a crowd of angry protesters in Yemen (a particularly odd choice, since Yemen is a U.S. ally and the only true democracy on the Arabian peninsula) who are rioting for no reason that is ever adequately explained. Jackson's men gun down the rampaging Arabs (who die in a horribly gory mess, and are portrayed as freakish, almost inhuman monsters); when he's brought to trial for misconduct after slaughtering 83 people, a craven, politically correct diplomat finds videotaped evidence that the Arabs (naturally) attacked first, and destroys the tape lest America's standing in the Arab world be jeopardized. (A few years later, this would seem especially hilarious.) Best of all, in one scene, we are shown that nearly every one of the allegedly innocent Arabs are packing major firepower -- including a five-year-old crippled girl! Kill 'em all, SamJack, and let God sort 'em out.

Related Posts:

'Heading for Trouble

I'm Gonna Get You Kafir

'Heading for Trouble

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:30:00 GMT

One of the movies I'm most looking forward to this fall is Towelhead, a creepy coming-of-age drama with the twist that the lead character, Jasira Maroun, is an Arab-American girl from a strict traditionalist family. Based on a surprisingly good novel by Alicia Eran (herself of Egyptian descent), Towelhead may be a disappointment or it may be a success, but one thing's for sure: it's already generated a stupid, meaningless controversy, and for a small indie film, that's money in the bank.

As an Arab-American, I've learned to take everything that comes out of CAIR -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- with a grain of salt. They do vital, much-needed work in exposing the often insidious amount of racism, prejudice and bigotry that Arabs and Muslims suffer in this country, and since 9/11, their work couldn't be more necessary. They're also particularly adept at pointing out the numerous cultural stereotypes by which Arabs and Muslims are victimized, and they keep up the good work despite the profound hatred they generate from right-wingers, who seem to regard them as quasi-criminals and terror-abbetors who are morally just south of Osama bin-Laden. That's the upside. The downside is that they have the typical thin skin of every advocacy group, and every so often they find themselves on the wrong side of an argument, as is the case now, when they have demanded that Warner Brothers change the name of Towelhead, which they find racist and offensive, to Nothing is Private (the name under which it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year).

Of course, the film's writer and director both make the rather obvious point that it's specifically because "towelhead" is a racist word that they chose it as a name. The Hot Blog reports on writer Alicia Erian's comments on the controversy: "I am of course aware that the title of my book is an ethnic slur. Indeed, I selected the title to highlight one of the novel's major themes: racism. Towelhead...is an ugly word. The job of the artist, however, has been, and always will be, to highlight that which is ugly in the hopes of finding something beautiful. This charge, by necessity, will at times put the artist at odds with admirable groups like CAIR. The solution, it seems to me, is not to force the artist to alter his or her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion."

Towelhead's director, Alan Ball (of American Beauty fame), adds, "As a gay man, I know how it feels to be called hateful names simply because of who I am. Therefore, I felt it was important to retain the title of Alicia Erian's novel, in which she so effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language...I believe one of the unintended consequences of forbidding such words to be spoken is imbuing those words with more power than they ever should have."

Warner is standing by the choice and retaining the name, having issued a boilerplate corporate 'we-apologize-to-anyone-who-is-offended' apology, and CAIR continues to argue for a name change. As someone who has been called a raghead on more than one occasion, what I want to know is this: why couldn't they get an Arab-American actress to play the lead? Summer Bishil looks like she'll do a perfectly fine job in the role of Jasira, but she's of East Indian descent. Is it that hard to find a real Arab in Hollywood?

The Jailbait Sweet 16 (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

This modern day take on Lolita, reviled by some, adored and Academy-Awarded by others, tells the story of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a miserable hen-pecked middle-aged loser reinvigorated by a surge of life-altering lust for the sexually aggressive friend (Mena Suvari) of his mopey teenage daughter (Thora Birch). To attract Suvari’s character, Angela, Burnham starts working out, pumping up his body while channeling happy memories of his irresponsible, pot-smoking youth. Eventually, Burnham gets his wish to have sex with Angela...but, upon learning that the allegedly promiscuous girl is actually a virgin, he pulls back from the brink at the last moment, suddenly remembering that he is, in fact, an adult. And then he gets shot in the head...a nice, throwback moment to the old Hays Code days when moral transgression always led to a grisly end, cautioning the rest of us against stepping over the line. Yet transgression is part of the film’s DNA, and while I can appreciate the reasons why certain people hate this movie (the artifice, the middle-aged lust thing, the Spacey Smarm Quotient), I nevertheless enjoy the message of the smart Alan Ball script that we are not defined by our age, our possessions, or the way we’re perceived, and lying to ourselves about who we’d rather be instead of accepting who we really are leads to heartache, rage, bad relationships and, occasionally, bullets in the head. Like many dirty old men before him, Lester Burnham thinks he wants sex with a much younger woman, but what he really wants is to simply be much younger, with all of life’s possibilities ahead rather than fading away in the rearview mirror.

AMERICAN PIE (1999)

And speaking of fin de siècle movies with “American” in the title co-starring Mena Suvari...this raunchy-sweet comedy was a throwback to 1980s teen sex comedies like Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Risky Business, Porky’s, Screwballs, Losin’ It, The Last American Virgin, Zapped! and etc., etc. etc. Yet somehow, despite scenes of adolescent pie-fucking, discussions of inappropriate relations with a flute at teenage band camp, tons of high school sex and the deflowering of a pubescent boy by a predatory Mary Kay Letourneau-esque older woman, American Pie barely raised a flicker of controversy upon its release, possibly because it was simply too funny and ridiculous to get all het up about...but also perhaps because of the genuine affection writer/directors Chris and Paul Weitz had for their characters, male and female, as opposed to presenting them as figures of scorn and/or inflatable sex dolls (or just so much bloody meat, like the unfortunate young victims in any number of slasher flicks from Halloween to Hostel, where sex literally equals death). As the esteemed Mr. Pierce’s notes in an earlier post on Lolita, Nabokov’s book, for all the controversy surrounding it, was actually funny...and American Pie, a kind of classic in its own right, proves once again that sometimes the best way to deal with the scary issue of sex is simply to laugh.

FREEWAY (1996)

And then there’s the less funny side of sex: molestation, prostitution and violence against women, all of which is faced and overcome by a modern day So-Cal Red Riding Hood in this astonishing exploitation film by jailbait auteur Matthew Bright, whose fetish for pigtails and ponytails drove him to personally style the hair of his actresses...which must make him a creep, right? And yet, despite Bright's seemingly shady fascination with underage sexuality, this is one of the most empowering, ass-kicking girl power movies I’ve ever seen. Reese Witherspoon leaves this one off her resume, and yet her portrayal of the indomitable white trash warrior Vanessa Lutz is, hands-down, the single best performance of her career, promising a future of nitro-fueled intensity that (Tracy Flick aside) pretty much fizzled into perky romantic comedy fluff. Remember how cool Emilio Estevez was in Repo Man before he became...y’know, Emilio Estevez? Yeah, it’s kinda like that. The story pits Witherspoon’s illiterate, underage Lutz against a crack whore mother (Amanda Plummer), an abusive stepfather, the L.A.P.D. and, most notably, Kiefer Sutherland as the story’s Big Bad Wolf, Bob Wolverton (get it?), a leering bogeyman of a sexual predator. The escalating verbal and physical warfare between Lutz and Wolverton taps into something downright primal and possibly Freudian, as if Bright is investing all his forbidden love for the raw sexuality and electric vitality of youth into Lutz and all the self-loathing shame surrounding his secret, twisted obsessions into Wolverton, then letting the two duke it out in a steel-cage match. The result is the greatest B-movie John Waters never made, a loud, raucous, thriller with jaw-dropping stretches of pitch-black comedy and a truly startling cameo by the queen of Jailbait Cinema, the one and only Brooke Shields, who shows up (along with Mr. Bright’s even more peculiar sequel to Freeway) in part three of this list.

KIDS (1995)

In Kids, the first feature directed by the legendary photographer Larry Clark, a bunch of teenagers spend a day and a night wandering around New York City in the summer. They have sex, shoplift, beat the crap out of somebody, take drugs, and have an orgiastic party. There's no plot to speak of, but there is a suspense hook: Jennie (Chloe Sevigny) has just learned that she's contracted AIDS from the mushmouthed, seventeen-year-old lothario Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a serial deflowerer of girls who imagines that his sexual partners will always remember him if he's their first but who loses any interest in them after that, and she sets out to try to find him before he can rack up his next intended victim, Ruby (Rosario Dawson). (She is unsuccessful in this.) The whole movie is sunk so deep inside its obsessions with selfish teenage kicks that it gives the feeling that the screen could use a bath. When it first appeared, Kids was THE controversial indie film of its season, and it was defended by some moralists who argued that Clark and his twenty-two-year-old screenwriting partner Harmony Korine were obviously showing us these youngsters acting like animals--which is the closest thing they have to an interesting quality--as a "wake-up call" to parents. Please. Clark's subsequent films (Bully, Wassup Rockers), and for that matter the photo collections with which he'd made his name (Tulsa, Teenage Lust) have only served to confirm that Clark likes to film teenagers babbling incoherently, acting out nastily and fucking because he likes to watch teenagers babbling incoherently, acting out nastily and fucking; pointing a camera at it gives him an excuse to indulge in his hobby, which he is of course entitled to share with others who have similar interests. Those of us who used to get bored with such things after about three minutes even when we were teenagers need to look elsewhere.

HARD CANDY (2005)

At 21, Ellen Page sure is a hard-working gal. Juno may have made her a star when it opened late last year, but in recent months we've seen the arrival of three other movies in which she stars or has prominent roles (Smart People, The Tracey Fragments, and An American Crime, which played at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival but recently premiered on Showtime cable). In fact, the success of Juno was the explosion coming at the end of a long fuse set by the cult home video success of Hard Candy, a two-character drama that uses the then-teenaged actress's mixture of seductiveness and spikiness for all it's worth. She plays a 14-year-old who has struck up an Internet correspondence with an adult photographer (Patrick Wilson); when she meets him for the first time, she invites herself back to his place with the promise of hearing a Goldfrapp mp3 he boasts of having. Once they get back to his place, it turns out that she's springing a trap; taking him prisoner, she informs him that she knows that he's a pedophile who's involved in the murder of a girl, and she proceeds to torture him, threaten him with exposure and castration, and cajole him to do the right thing and commit suicide. It's to Page's considerable credit that, by turns enticing, alarming, and outright scary, she remains fascinating throughout, even though she can't make her character believable; she has a degree of infallible self-assurance that would be hard to buy in a SWAT team leader, let alone a 14-year-old girl playing cat and mouse with a psycho on his home turf. Her choicest moment of degradation for her prey may be when, having gotten him where she wants him, she casually reveals that she actually thinks Goldfrapp is pretty lame. Other movies (such as The Professional) know that the viewer's inner pedophile will be flattered by seeing a young girl insist that she wants the older man even if he has the nobility (and the box-office savvy) to not follow through; Hard Candy knows that, while castration threats are pretty bad, the best way to make the older man shrivel up is to let him know that, when he thought he was being cool and up to date, he was actually sounding like an old fart.

For more jailbait: Part One, Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Noooo!

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:55:00 GMT

Justice League is on hold. Damn you, Hollywood! America needs more superheroes!

First Run Features will distribute the documentary Jihad for Love — the first documentary ever made about gay Muslims, from the directors of Trembling Before G-d, about gay Orthodox Jews. This is sure to go over well in the Muslim world. In more Islam-baiting news, Warner Independent will release the new film directed by American Beauty writer (and Six Feet Under creator) Alan Ball: Towelhead, about "the sexual awakening of a thirteen-year-old Arab-American girl." At least it's not the sexual awakening of a gay thirteen-year-old Arab-American boy. That'd really rile 'em.

Hayden Panettiere may star in the adaptation of Larry Doyle's comic novel I Love You, Beth Cooper. The book's supposed to be great, and gets a nod from me for employing the underappreciated Evan Dorkin as cover artist.