The Screengrab : bebe neuwirth

Morning Deal Report: "Rome" Redux?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Be it ever so crappy, there’s no resisting the new Christmas movie over the long Thanksgiving weekend. The latest evidence is Four Christmases, a big, stinky chunk of holiday coal that nevertheless filled its stocking to the tune of $46.7 million since its Wednesday opening. Bolt nipped Twilight for second place, with both taking in over $26 million. The other major debut was Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, which finished in fifth place with a $20 million total since Wednesday.

Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth are reuniting, but not for a big screen version of Frasier. They’ll both play instructors in the remake of Fame, alongside Charles S. Dutton, Megan Mullally and (of course) Debbie Allen as the principal. “As with the 1980 original, the remake follows dancers, singers, actors and artists from auditions to graduation at the New York City High School of Performing Arts,” Variety confirms.

We never got those Deadwood movies (and never really wanted the Carnivale ones), but there is another extinct HBO drama that may see the light of theaters. “Bruno Heller says he wants to produce a theatrical wrap-up to his critically beloved and prematurely canceled HBO drama Rome,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Heller would not discuss plot ideas, but the original series outline for Rome next called for the hedonistic Roman leaders to deal with the rise of a certain problematic rabbi -- a story line that would have put a whole new spin on the Greatest Story Ever Told and potentially bring Rome a larger audience.”

Related:
Take Five: HBO
Trailer Review: An American Carol

Forgotten Films: "Getting to Know You" (1999)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Heather Matarazzo turns 26 next month. Matarazzo was still in her early teens when she starred in Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse, in which she gave a brave, risky performance as the iconically dislikable high school nerd Dawn Weiner; in her most recent movie appearance, in Hostel II, she got to hang upside down while a naked woman split her open with a scythe. Whether her future roles will give her more of a chance to show what she can do as an actress, she's already confirmed the promise of her work in Dollhouse. She's never been more affecting than in Getting to Know You, a first feature directed by Lisanne Skyler from a screenplay she adapted from stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Matarazzo plays Judith, who arrives with her pissed-off, uncommunicative brother, Wesley (played by a not-yet-irritating Zach Braff) at the bus station where they'll be waiting to go their separate ways. Judith strikes up a conversation with Jimmy (Mark Weston), who seems to appear out of the ether as if in response to her yearning, lonely vibe. Jimmy claims to know her from school, but he also claims to know the back story to just about everyone in the station, as he spins yarns about how the weary-looking security guard (Bo Hopkins) came to be a haunted man in hiding from his past and a woman (played by the director's sister Tristine Skyler) got mixed up with a manic-depressive gamblin' man (Chris Noth), his glib tongue and honeyed smile are like a red flag alerting her to his untrustworthiness. But the possibility that he's a nut seems less important in a setting like this than whatever his fantasies can provide in the way of entertainment value.

A decade or so ago, following in the wake of Robert Altman's Raymond Carver tribute Short Cuts, there was a mini-trend of independent features--such as Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects, which drew on the writings of A. M. Homes--that mashed together story threads from an author's collected words and tried to shape them into a single movie. Getting to Know You is much more gracefully shaped than most of these; it weaves the character vignettes supplied by Hopkins, Lisanne Skyler, and the other members of a supporting cast that includes Mary McCormack, Sonja Sohn, and Leo Burmeister into a slowly percolating narrative that slowly closes in on the subject that has aroused Jimmy's curiosity, and that Judith is in no hurry to address: what are she and her brother running from, and how has it split them apart, both physically and maybe emotionally? (The answer involves Bebe Neuwirth and Mark Blum as the missing component of their family unit, a pair of self-involved failed ballroom dancers--I didn't even know that was a category--who would rank high on any list of the sorriest sets of parents in the history of independent movies.)Getting to Know You, which has its own look and a wistful emotional tone that stays with you, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the "Someone to Watch" prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. To date, it remains Skyler's only feature film; here's hoping she gets to give us something else to watch soon.

Summerfest '08: "Summer of Sam"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Summerfest '08, as you know, is our feature here at the Screengrab wherein we suggest a way for you to kill two hours while waiting for your grill to heat up. Every movie we profile on Wednesdays from now until Labor Day comes with our personal guarantee: these movies may not be essential hot-weather viewing. They may not even be good. But we can assure you with complete confidence that they will have the word 'summer' in the title. This week, we'll be taking a break from our previous diet of decades-old footage of people wearing skimpy beachwear and turning to a more recent effort by the director whose name is virtually synonymous with good-time party movies: Spike Lee. Responding to the demands of filmgoers, critics, and studio executives who wanted to know when he was going to produce a summer blockbuster, Lee, over the 4th of July weekend in 1999, brought us a bright, cheery feel-good movie about a fat psychotic whose neighbor's demonically possessed dog ordered him to murder couples in cars.

Strap it down and get ready for some hot fun in the summertime with Spike Lee's Summer of Sam!

THE ACTION: Boyhood chums Vinnie (John Leguizamo, in a stunning 1970s-style performance that recalls the glory days when all our favorite actors were zapped out of their craniums on cocaine) and Richie (Adrien Brody, wearing the world's least-convincing liberty spikes) are reunited after a long separation. But things are no longer the same between them; Vinnie has picked up the habit of sodomizing his wife (the much-abused Mira Sorvino) in the kind of discotheques Kurt Anderson once described as "fun that isn't", and Richie has become some kind of crazy bisexual punk rocker or something, of the sort once seen on an episode of Quincy. The suspicious behavior of Richie -- dressing all funny, listening to the Who, dancing with his shirt off, and expressing sympathy for the Boston Red Sox -- immediately triggers in his goombah-heavy neighbors the urge to reenact a pasta dinner theater version of the Salem Witch Trials to determine if he is the infamous Son of Sam murderer.

THE PLAYERS: Spike Lee directed this one, apparently in an attempt to prove that he was physically capable of making a movie about white people, albeit coked-up, rough-tradey, and serial-killerish white people. He even has some laughs with this conceit, appearing in the movie as a TV reporter who gets chastised by black residents of Brooklyn for never paying any attention to them. The screenplay -- co-written by Sopranos fixture Michael Imperioli -- gives some awfully hokey dialogue and characterization to Adrien Brody, who is to punk rockers what Maynard G. Krebs was to beatniks, and the rest of the cast, all of whom are quite accomplished actors, are still saddled with being heavily unlikable. It doesn't say much for the people we're supposed to be empathizing with that at the end of the movie, the person we feel sorriest for is that sick fuck David Berkowitz.

SUMMER FUN: Summer of Sam is heavy on the summer and light on the fun. Vinnie tries to have fun, but blowing coke through his every orifice and forcing his wife into omnisexual threesomes proves to be a lot more taxing than he anticipated. Richie seems to be having fun converting the neighborhood strawberry into a Kmart version of Nancy Spungeon, but his bogus English accent, bizarre hustler scenes, and uncanny ability to evoke a time traveler from 1987 Los Angeles is no fun for the rest of us. Even the witch hunt is really a lot more depressing than it is entertaining, though Lee does get plenty of comic mileage out of a scene where the locals consider the possibility that Reggie Jackson is in fact the Son of Sam, and debate whether or not they should turn him in, given that they're going to need him for the World Series. Once again, Berkowitz seems to have more joie de vivre than anyone else on screen.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: A few of the the local Italian-Americans embrace the way of the Hawaiian shirt, and you get the sneaking suspicion that Detective Lou Petrocelli, portrayed with gusto by Anthony La Paglia, has at least a few of these coconutty numbers in his wardrobe for the Fraternal Order of Police barbeques. But mostly, it's hideously overdone polyester suits, second-hand wifebeaters, and whatever Rip Taylor version of punk fashion that Adrien Brody is rocking that stands out here. The lesson of this highly meaningful movie -- other than that Spike Lee's powerful visual sensibilities as a director can overcome any number of deficiencies at the script level -- is that having some nut running around pounding peoples' skulls open with a .44 can really throw cold water on your summer fun.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: Everyone seems to be having sex in this movie -- hell, the robust lustiness with which an uncredited John Turturro imbues the talking dog that tells David Berkowitz to kill people implies that even he's getting some -- but hardly anyone seems to be enjoying it. It's a highly Catholic movie where having too much of a good time gets you stuck with an angry spouse who wants to divorce you, an angry mob who wants to lynch you, or an angry lunatic who wants to shoot you in the face. Although there's lots of pretty women in the movie (including Sorvino, Bebe Neuwirth, and Jennifer Esposito), all of them end up crying, and none of them wear a bikini. All that said, it's a damn good movie despite its reputation as a lesser Spike Lee effort, and it has one of the highest occurences of the word "fuck" of any movie ever made. Which, if you've had some of the same kind of summers that we've had, is perfectly appropriate.