The Screengrab : benicio del toro

Thursday Poll for April 9, 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Last week’s April Fool’s Day festivities got the Screengrab thinking about cinematic goof-offs past and present. Bringing old and new together was the announcement of the cast of the Farelly brothers’ upcoming Three Stooges project, and we asked you which of the casting choices you found most intriguing. Of the three announced actors, your top choice was perhaps the most unlikely- Benicio Del Toro as trio’s cranky ringleader, Moe. Bringing in a full 50% of the vote, Del Toro bested his future cast mates, Jim Carrey as Curly (who got a scant 6%) and Sean Penn as Larry (13%). Interestingly enough, the second most popular choice was a joke inclusion on my part- Iggy Pop as himself- although considering the Farellys’ history of stunt casting in small roles, I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds his way into the movie. And for the record, “What? This casting sucks!” tied with Penn at 13%.

In addition, for our bonus poll last week, we attempted to settle the age-old Keaton vs. Chaplin debate. The results found 2/3 of you preferring Keaton, with the rest partial to Chaplin. However, it’s perfectly okay for you to like both, each in his own way. Reader Brandon even threw out an interesting option, “Keaton for shorts, Chaplin for features.” Any way’s fine with us- we’re not looking to start any fights, after all…

In case you hadn’t heard, this week marks the start of major league baseball season, in which all the promise of spring training begins to be fulfilled in earnest- or, in the case of some of us, gets flushed down the crapper. With the possible exception of boxing, no sport has been given the cinematic treatment more often or with the same degree of success as baseball. From little league to the big leagues, baseball movies are perennial favorites of moviegoers across the country. A little while back, Baseball America magazine conducted a poll of the greatest baseball movies of all time, and with this week’s poll we’ll be asking you which of their top five is your favorite.

Which of Baseball America's top 5 is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

As always the comments section is open for you to stump for your favorites or suggest other related topics of conversation. For example- is it just me, or is the American League much better-represented by Hollywood movies than the National? Discuss.

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The Best:

THE SPECIALS (2000)

Okay, I’ll admit, this one might be cheating since there’s never really been a Specials comic book...but there’s no question Craig Mazin’s criminally underseen comedy is, indeed, a comic book classic. The film (starring national treasure Thomas Haden Church as The Strobe, Judy Greer as best-Goth-girlfriend-ever Deadly Girl and Rob Lowe’s finest hour and a half as The Weevil) hit theaters for about five minutes in L.A. before sinking into undeserved obscurity, and I only saw it because The New Times and the L.A. Weekly raved about it. They were both right for once, and so now I'm spreading the love in case you ever spot this in a video store (or trust me enough to add it to your Netflix queue). The premise is similar to Mystery Men (if, as one IMDb commenter quipped, Mystery Men had been directed by Eric Rohmer) -- i.e., an ensemble comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes -- but The Specials is less a genre parody than a look at the group dynamics of co-workers who only HAPPEN to be superheroes (although for most of the movie, they could just as easily be doctors, musicians or real estate salesmen). Kitchen-sink indie filmmaking at its best, the movie features sharp, funny dialogue, about 90 seconds of special effects and a terrible coming attractions trailer that makes it look like a “wacky” Hollywood yuk-fest instead of the endearingly goofy gem that it really is...which is why I included the (admittedly censored) scene above instead.

SIN CITY (2005)

All green screens and no sets make Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City a deliriously hyper-stylized cinematic interpretation of Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel series. Generating virtually every non-human element of his film noir with a computer, Rodriguez creates an adaptation nearly identical, in visual terms, to its source material. Fidelity, however, only gets one so far. And what makes the sumptuously black-and-white Sin City truly thrum with grungy, brutal life is not only its all-star cast’s fittingly outrageous, archetypes-on-mescaline performances (notably those by Rosario Dawson and Benicio Del Toro) and Rodriguez’s expert reproduction of Miller’s hand-drawn comic panels, but the director’s approximation of the brisk movement implied by those illustrations. Rodriguez brings Miller’s images to life with dynamic verve, a feat almost as thrilling as the performance of Mickey Rourke as battle-scarred tough guy Marv, a granite bulldozer whom the actor – even under pounds of facial prosthetics – embodies with a burning-red heart and soul.

BLADE 2 (2002)

After several stuttering attempts to follow DC in leasing its characters to the big screen, Marvel Comics had its first real success with the 1998 Blade, a horror-action hybrid based on one of the lesser supporting characters from its back pages: Blade, the African-American vampire hunter who himself possesses the advantages of vampirism (super strength, extended lifespan) and none of the disadvantages (can withstand sunlight, is not Eurotrashy), was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula during the blaxploitation movie era. (Artist Gene Colan based his look partly on that of Jim Brown.) The first Blade movie, directed by Stephen Norrington (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and written by David S. Goyer, was unapologetic cheeseball fun, with a choice selection of bits from the comic and energetic, unhinged performances by Wesley Snipes in the title role and Stephen Dorff at his man-you-love-to-hate best as the villainous Deacon Frost. The sequel, though, is real gourmet trash, with the sensationally gifted director Guillermo del Toro brought in to take Goyer's nonsense about warring vampire tribes, give it a high polish, and set it all to a thumping hip-hop-meets-electronica score. The result is one of the most improbably gorgeous mindless thrill rides of the last several years, though the franchise keepers erred badly in permitting Goyer to not only write but direct the subsequent Blade Trinity, which plowed into a wall with all hands lost.

HELLBOY (2004)

Coming off Blade 2, Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to get himself an annuity by taking over the Harry Potter franchise in favor of hatching a movie around writer-artist Mike Mignola's unlikely hero -- a gargoyle-shaped paranormal investigator with a back story related to World War II who operates in an environment that calls up memories of H. P. Lovecraft's squishy horror fantasies. Del Toro captures the look and feel of Hellboy's world to a degree that marks the film as clearly a labor of love, and Ron Perlman, who plays the title character, reaches through the layers of makeup to give the enterprise some soul. He's more skittishly adolescent than the gruff loner of the comics, which pays off major comic dividends in the scenes involving the poor red bastard's crush on a moody firestarter played by Selma Blair: she'd make King Kong look down and shuffle his feet awkwardly.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Though often dismissed as merely an early, cheesy vehicle for then-fledgling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius’ swords-and-sandals saga Conan the Barbarian is pure mythic pulp, its epic action and fantasy proving faithful to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s violent legends. Milius’ macho persona forcefully informs this testosterone-laced Conan tale, in which an orphaned child becomes a slave, then becomes a warrior, and then finally a king, a path paved with equal measures of bloodshed, sly humor and pseudo-profound pronouncements about honor and glory. Still something of an amateurish actor, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger is nonetheless an ideal Conan, and despite the proceedings’ one-dimensionality, the director’s majestic widescreen compositions lend the film a striking classicism. It’s the opening centerpiece, however, that’s truly unforgettable, in which Milius’ camera lingers, for what seems like an eternity, on the cold, motionless face of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) just before the evil warlord beheads Conan’s mother in front of the lad’s eyes.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Scorsese and Day-Lewis Reunite

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:20:00 GMT

Blart has fallen. The Liam Neeson thriller Taken topped the box office with $24.6 million, knocking everyone’s favorite mall cop to the runner-up spot with $14 million. The Uninvited debuted in third place with $10.5 million, with Hotel for Dogs and Gran Torino rounding out the top five.

Martin Scorsese is lining up his third collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis. Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence “is set in the 17th century as two Jesuit priests face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and to spread the gospel of Christianity,” Variety reports. Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal are also in negotiations to co-star.

Mickey Rouke, who seems determined never to be out of work again, is in talks to star in the gangster movie Broken Horses for Indian writer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra. “Co-produced by Mumbai-based Reliance Big Pictures, Horses, which plans to shoot in New Mexico and New York, is part of a multipicture deal between Chopra and the Indian studio,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Scorsese and De Niro Heard You Paint Houses
Mickey Rourke's Whiplash

Screengrab Predicts the Oscars: Nominations (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

BEST ACTOR

Scott Von Doviak Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

If Sean Penn can get nominated for I Am Sam, there's no reason to think his beautiful work in Milk will be overlooked. Everyone loves a comeback, so even if they're a little worried he'll take a drunken stumble into Jack Nicholson's lap, Mickey Rourke will be nominated for The Wrestler. Rounding out the leading men will be Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Brad Pitt (Benjamin Button), and this year's sentimental "Hey, you're almost friggin' 80!" nominee, Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino).

WINNER
Rourke. Watch out, ladies!

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts:

NOMINEES
Christian Bale (The Dark Knight)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Synecdoche, NY)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Since Philip Seymour Hoffman appeared in two movies likely to figure in the Academy Awards this year, it follows that he must be nominated for at least one. Brad Pitt will be nominated for long and faithful service, Christian Bale for being in a blockbuster that didn't suck, and Mickey Rourke for appearing again out of nowhere. Sean Penn will win, because he is playing a gay man. But also because this is the best role he has done in a good while, if not ever. Madonna will be jealous.

WINNER
Sean Penn

Paul Clark Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Where’s Richard Jenkins, you ask? The Screengrab favorite won numerous early accolades for his work in The Visitor, but the risky plan to open the film early to build steam for Jenkins has led to the unassuming actor getting lost in the end-of-the-year shuffle, as most of the honors have been split between Penn and Rourke. With early predictions such as Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road) and Benicio Del Toro (Che) having largely stalled out, Jenkins is the only potential spoiler here, but between Rourke’s comeback-kid status, the high-profile biopic turns of Penn and Langella, and two big stars in Eastwood and Pitt, I’m predicting that Jenkins pulls a Paul Giamatti and gets shut out of a nomination despite the early hosannas. As for the eventual winner, it seems too soon for Penn to win a second Oscar, and unless Rourke torpedoes his chances between now and February 22, I suspect that capping off his comeback with a statuette will prove too perfect an ending for voters to resist.

WINNER
Mickey Rourke

Andrew Osborne Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

After all the endless hype about Mickey Rourke’s comeback in The Wrestler, it’d be heee-larious if he didn’t actually get nominated. And I’m guessing there’s more than a few Academy voters not exactly wishing Mickey well...but Hollywood and professional sports are all about storylines, so a Rourke nod seems inevitable. Unlike Rourke, Frank Langella and Sean Penn were playing other people in their movies rather than semi-autobiographical stunt-casting versions of themselves...and doing it well: Penn, in particular, seemed like an entirely different human being in Milk (which, y’know, is probably why the award is “Best Actor” instead of “Best Comeback”). Then again, there’s something to be said for a beloved screen icon just playing a stylized, hyper-real version of themselves, especially when they’re still kicking more ass in their seventies than alleged action star Shia LaBeouf will kick on the ass-kickingest day of his life, and especially when said role occurs in what may be said icon’s last screen role ever...in other words, I’ll be surprised if Clint Eastwood doesn’t grab a nomination for Gran Torino. And speaking of beloved movie stars, I’m supposed to pick Brad Pitt for the fifth spot, but what if the Academy decides his performance in Benjamin Button was more to do with CGI than acting chops? In that case, they might choose a dark horse, under-the-radar industry vet who’s paid his dues and (unlike Pitt) may never get another shot at the brass ring: the lovely and talented “that guy” Richard Jenkins for his role in The Visitor. (But Penn’s gonna actually win, partly thanks to Proposition 8...and I mentioned that whole crazy “acting” thing, yes?)

WINNER
Sean Penn

Leonard Pierce Predicts:

NOMINATIONS
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Goodness knows why anyone continues to insist that Leonardo Di Caprio is a good actor, but I’d bet my next paycheck on him getting the nod. Frank Langella, likewise, plays Nixon like a broad majestic Shannon – that ain’t acting, that’s overacting – but the Academy loves an old pro. Pitt’s Button nom makes up for the Burn After Reading one he won’t get. In the end, though, it’ll be a battle between comeback kid Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Sean Penn’s well-deserved nomination for Milk; I’ll predict that Rourke gets it, though, since Penn has had (and will have) many more moments in the sun, while this is likely Mickey’s last dance. BIGGEST SCREWJOB: Benicio Del Toro’s incredibly tight performance in Che won’t get recognized because the public won’t sit through a 17-hour movie, and right-wing critics will yap endlessly that the movie glorifies a killer, which has never, ever happened before in a Hollywood movie.

WINNER
Mickey Rourke

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NOMINEES
CLINT EASTWOOD, FRANK LANGELLA, SEAN PENN, BRAD PITT, MICKEY ROURKE

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WINNER
MICKEY ROURKE

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five & Six

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Trailer Review: Che

Paul Clark — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Most trailers, even really good ones, do little more than to provide a snapshot of the movie- what it’s about, its cast, sometimes the tone it’s going for. Rare is the trailer that actually has a trajectory to it in a way that encapsulates the journey taken by the film itself. What’s most impressive about the trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s epic Che is that it begins just the way one would expect it to only to switch gears, almost imperceptibly, to something difference and less endearing to many audiences. Perhaps the most useless thing a Che bio could do at this point is to simplify and lionize its hero like so many t-shirts and dorm room posters have before, and I was somewhat put off by the early scenes in this trailer, in which it looks like the film is painting Che (Cannes prizewinner Benicio Del Toro) as a romanticized revolutionary. However, later on the trailer switches gears to make him much less idealized, and the war he’s fighting is much uglier (love the aspect ratio shift too). And the final exchange is perfect. Che has gotten wildly diverging reviews since its premiere at Cannes, but I’m still hopeful that it’ll be one of this year’s significant films.

Screengrab Salutes: The Top Biopics of All Time! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998)

Biopics have always blurred the line between fact and legend, a stylistic practice that both fueled and destroyed the career of Hunter S. Thompson, who (at his best) went beyond the bounds of traditional journalism by injecting himself into the stories he covered, amplifying the reality of his subject matter through wild exaggeration. But, as a certain lame duck American president can certainly attest, “truthiness” is a slippery slope, and Thompson eventually began to confuse himself with his journalistic doppleganger, Raoul Duke, the drug-addled party monster at the heart of Terry Gilliam’s psychedelic adaptation of the college dorm room staple once considered unfilmable. While a “straight” biopic of the actual events of Thompson’s life would be fascinating (as long as Art Linson, director of the tedious Bill Murray fiasco Where the Buffalo Roam, had nothing to do with it), Gilliam instead captured the legend of Thompson/Duke and his infamous 1971 road trip to Sin City with his “attorney,” Dr. Gonzo (a funhouse mirror fictionalization of the Mexican-American political activist Oscar Zeta Acosta). Critics loathed the over-the-top depiction of Thompson’s hallucinated wonderland, yet despite an excess of shrieking in Benicio del Toro’s headache-inducing performance as Gonzo, Johnny Depp admirably captures both the real Thompson and his alter ego in an underrated performance. Plus, the movie’s a flat-out hoot: after howling through a near empty screening with fellow Screengrabber Scott Von Doviak, another audience member who’d ignored all the scathing reviews approached us to hazard the minority opinion, “Yeah! It was funny...right?”

RAGING BULL (1980)

Directors who specialized in noir – drawn as they were to doomed heroes and disorienting levels of moral ambiguity – loved to make films about boxers. Carnal, visceral creatures, they seemed particularly drawn to the sort of manipulative femme fatales the genre celebrated, and they played to the notion of destiny’s brute: they were men, after all, whose primary form of human communication was savage physical violence. Martin Scorsese, who brought the dynamic emotional energy of the ’70s and the gorgeous visual iconography and crushing sense of guilt and shame of Catholicism to the noir framework, clearly felt the same way, so it’s no coincidence that one of his greatest films is a breathtaking refinement of the old-school pug-centered crime drama. What makes Raging Bull such a shocker, then, is that it’s a true story: Jake LaMotta’s meteoric rise, brutal determination, mercurial mood swings, and destructive relationships with his wife, his family, and his God seem like the stuff of lurid, overblown pulp drama. Given the material they had to work with, it’s no wonder Scorsese and his collaborators created such a stunning, immediate film. While much is made of the admittedly astonishing physical transformation made by Robert DeNiro as his LaMotta slid from lean, hungry contender to fat, washed-up ex-champ, his emotional and psychological transformation is just as incredible, as the cocky, unstoppable self-confidence of the young man inexorably decays into the pitiful, indulgent self-loathing of age.

MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (1985)

Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay to Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, which may have served as a sort of apprenticeship for his directing, four years later, the moving screen biography of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima. Not only did he borrow heavily from Scorsese’s visual handiwork (notice the overhead camera angles, and the visual tonality that mixes elegiac near-silences with scenes of fiery violence), but he chose as his subject a public figure who shared more in common with Jake LaMotta than either of them would have cared to admit. Like LaMotta, Mishima’s story was so bizarre as to seem like the stuff of fiction: a weak young man who transformed himself through sheer willpower into a physically perfect bodybuilder; a barely closeted homosexual with poetic inclinations who married one of his country’s most famous female beauties and preached a gospel of rabid militarism; and a famous celebrity, considered the greatest writer of his generation, who ended his life in the most base possible manner, staging a would-be fascist revolution that ended with him clumsily committing suicide as the soldiers he hoped to inspire laughed at his grand ideals. Deftly blending intense psychological moments from Mishima’s life with gorgeous evocations of some of the most famous scenes in his fiction, Schrader creates a biopic that shows how much he learned from Scorsese – and how much he brought to the table himself.

THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)

There were a million ways The Elephant Man could have gone wrong. (It’s easy to see how, in the innumerable one-joke parodies of it that sprang up in its wake.) A film about John Merrick, the terribly deformed Victorian-era man whose intelligence and perception transformed the lives of many who met him, could have been overly mawkish if taken too far in one direction, or grotesque and exploitative if taken too far in the other. Mel Brooks, who financed the film, knew this, and his first and best decision was to keep his name out of the production, realizing that audiences and critics would expect the film to be a joke if they thought it was coming from him. He took a major risk in hiring David Lynch to helm The Elephant Man, especially given Lynch’s penchant for unnerving surrealism, but Lynch was the best possible choice, and hit the necessary tone just right: he let Merrick’s appearance speak for itself, trusting John Hurt to communicate the agony of his mere existence as well as the man’s essential dignity. Lynch made the right decision to transfer his sense of the absurd and the bizarre onto Merrick’s surroundings, presenting us with a view of Victorian London as unsettling and alien as that of the world of Eraserhead, while putting Merrick in the position not of a monster, but of a man who did his best to be human in a world that would not allow him that role. The collaboration was so successful it’s a shame that the project Brooks next intended to do with Lynch – a surreal nightmare biography of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels set entirely inside the subject’s head - never got off the ground.

SAMURAI I: MUSASHI MIYAMOTO (1954)

When the historical figure you’re portraying in your biopic is less a human being than a character straight out of legend, you’ve got a lot of leeway in how you can portray him. There have been dozens of films in which legendary swordsman and duelist Miyamoto Musashi is the central figure, but the best of them all is director Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy. Though they’re best viewed as a whole, the first of the three movies is probably the strongest installment, telling the story of the epic figure from his humble beginnings to his utter transformation in the crucible of an unimaginably bloody battle. What Inagaki does right, and what distinguishes Musashi Miyamoto from the innumerable other films about the characters, is to strike a powerfully clear balance between historical storytelling and epic filmmaking; he is able, through solid storytelling and some highly inventive composition, to convey the sense that he is allowing us a glimpse of a real human figure who came from a particular time and place and ended up the way he did for discernable reasons, but he never lets go of the sweep and tension that remind us we’re watching a movie about a hero who is as much demigod as man. Of course, much of the credit must go to Toshirô Mifune, who gives the first of many towering performances in the lead role, yet Inagaki – rarely thought of as one of the first-rank Japanese directors of his day – does a fine job of sustaining the mood, tone, pace and look (abetted by some terrific EastmanColor cinematography by Jun Yasumoto) that distinguishes the whole trilogy. It’s as close to a definitive biopic as one can hope for when dealing with a legend.

Click Here For Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five & Part Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

Cannes Rundown- The Winners!

Paul Clark — Mon, 26 May 2008 02:24:00 GMT

Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre les Murs) won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, an award that was bestowed on the film earlier today. A last-minute addition to this year’s Competition lineup, Cantet’s film took home the top prize in a year that saw a number of notable titles but no clear frontrunner. The Class was announced as a unanimous Palme winner, and was praised by jury president Sean Penn for its “generosity.”

Due to Penn’s political leanings, many predicted Steven Soderbergh’s Che to be a contender for the Palme, but the film had to make do with a Best Actor award for star Benicio Del Toro. Taking home Best Actress was Sandra Corveloni for Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’ Linha de Passe.

Here’s the complete list of winners:

Palme d'Or: Entre Les Murs (The Class), directed by Laurent Cantet
Grand Prix (runner-up): Gomorra, directed by Matteo Garrone
Prix de la Mise en Scene (best director): Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys
Prix du Scenario (best screenplay): Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Le Silence de Lorna
Camera d'Or (best first feature): Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen
special mention: Ils mourront tous sauf moi, directed by Valeria Gai Guermanika
Prix du Jury (jury prize): Il Divo, directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Prix d'interpretation feminine (best actress): Sandra Corveloni for Linha de Passe
Prix d'interpretation masculine (best actor): Benicio del Toro for Che
Prix de 61st Festival de Cannes: Catherine Deneuve (Un Conte de noel) and Clint Eastwood (The Exchange)
Palme d'Or (short film): Metron, directed by Marian Crisan
special mention: Jerrycan, directed by Julius Avery

Cannes Rundown, Day 9: Shoot, coward. You're only going to kill a man.

Paul Clark — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:11:00 GMT

Steven Soderbergh’s mammoth two-part epic Che may not be the most universally loved film in competition this year, but it’s certainly become the most talked-about so far. Here’s a small smattering of reactions to the film, which stars Benicio Del Toro.

Glenn Kenny- “for better or worse… in terms of pop iconography, nothing says "overthrowing the system" better than the iconic image of Che. Good thing then, as far as my opinion is concerned, that Soderbergh doesn't have a rabble-rousing bone in his body. Che benefits greatly from certain Soderberghian qualities that don't always serve his other films well, e.g., detachment, formalism, and intellectual curiosity.”

Variety’s Todd McCarthy- ““Che” is too big a roll of the dice to pass off as an experiment, as it’s got to meet high standards both commercially and artistically. The demanding running time also forces comparison to such rare works as “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Reds” and other biohistorical epics. Unfortunately, “Che” doesn’t feel epic -- just long.”

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian- “The Cannes film festival now has a serious contender for the Palme d'or. Steven Soderbergh's four-and-a-half hour epic Che, about the revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was virile, muscular film-making, with an effortlessly charismatic performance by Benicio del Toro in the lead role. Perhaps it will even come to be seen as this director's flawed masterpiece: enthralling but structurally fractured - the second half is much clearer and more sure-footed than the first - and at times frustratingly reticent, unwilling to attempt any insight into Che's interior world. We see only Che the public man, the legendary comandante, defiant to the last.”

Believe it or not, there were actually other films at Cannes along with Che. We begin with Atom Egoyan’s Adoration. Screen Daily’s Howard Feinstein- “Following the failed effort to cross over into conventional, commercially viable film-making with Where The Truth Lies (2005), Canadian auteur Egoyan returns to his signature style with Adoration… Unfortunately, the stories here are thin, unnecessarily complicated and glibly cryptic; some sections are difficult to follow, even annoying in their self-consciousness.”

Also in competition, Philippe Garrel’s Frontier of Dawn. Here’s Karina Longworth of SpoutBlog- “There are shots in this film’s second half that are scarier than anything I’ve seen in a horror film in recent years––without the aid of any effect more special than a basic optical print––and simultaneously, incredibly moving in their invocation of a love that won’t die. Or, at the very least, refuses to abide by traditional boundaries of love and death.”

AO Scott on the out-of-competition film Delta- ““Delta,” as much as any so-so Hollywood romantic comedy, seems content to live inside the bubble of its limited ambitions. It is hard to imagine an audience for this film except in places like Cannes. That is not necessarily because the outside public is incurious or unsophisticated, but rather because “Delta” makes no particular effort to reach beyond the international coterie of critics and programmers who see it out of duty and devotion.”

On Johnny Mad Dog, here’s Jonathan Romney of Screen Daily- “Sauvaire gives us some of the most terrifying and feral militia forces ever seen on film. The young soldiers rarely speak beneath a furious yell, terrifying their victims and barking out slogans and morale-boosting chants apparently culled from Vietnam movies. There's a certain Lord Of The Flies horror in the suggestion that these are still children at play in the most murderous way, their battle garb suggestive of a nightmarish carnival.”

Finally, since many of you seem concerned with the whereabouts of Jennifer Chambers Lynch, here’s Time’s Richard Corliss on her new film Surveillance- “it's an authentic, systematically annoying weirdie about the investigation of a roadside homicide. Five were brutally killed by a couple of maniacs in leatherface masks. Now the three shaken survivors are being questioned in a police station by two outside agents (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) who are skeptical of the variations in the stories they hear. Think Rashomon meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Twin Peaks, and give lots of leeway for the gooniest improv overacting, and you may get on the warped wavelength of this semi-comic parable of social anarchy.”

Depp vs. Murray: Dueling Gonzos

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Many people think of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson as the drug-addled grotesque at the center of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, a buffoonish personification of the worst of ‘60s & ‘70s excess...and, by most accounts, Thompson both played up and fell victim to this public persona in the latter part of his life and career, trading on his wild-and-crazy persona in the pop culture fast lane like a counter-culture Hugh Hefner while his writing became ever more lazy and diffuse. "I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth,” he admitted as early as 1977, “and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting [his crazed, quasi-fictional alter-ego Raoul] Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."

In his prime, however, Thompson was not only a larger-than-life, groundbreaking literary stylist, but also a crack-shot political reporter with a formidable grasp of American realpolitik. Nearly four decades before Hilary and Barack started trading body blows in the 2008 primaries, Thompson was bemoaning the essential fracture he saw at the heart of the modern Democratic Party in Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72: “I think what most people seem to be tired of are the sort of lint-headed, wooly-minded—what a lot of people call do-gooders—people who would like to do the right thing, but who just can’t get it up.”

On The Campaign Trail ’72 is a fantastically insightful cautionary chronicle of the doomed McGovern presidential campaign, essential reading for anyone interested in the health of the Republic (especially in an election year)...and, in fact, I'd only just recently finished re-reading the book when a friend, out of the blue, sent me a DVD packed with various bits of Thompson-alia, including The Crazy Never Die, a 1988 documentary short about Dr. Gonzo by the Mitchell Brothers Film Group of San Francisco, along with material from the two extant fictional depictions of Thompson’s life: Terry Gilliam’s Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas (1998) and Art Linson’s Where The Buffalo Roam (1980).

I had seen both Thompson biopics before, but it was interesting to compare the movies and their lead performances side by side. According to Doug Hill & Jeff Weingrad’s backstage history Saturday Night, Bill Murray became so immersed in his semi-autobiographical portrayal (in Buffalo) that he palled around with and virtually became Hunter S. Thompson, “complete with long black cigarette holder, dark glasses, and nasty habits,” a pseudo-Method transformation that lasted until the movie came out and bombed like the Enola Gay, after which the comedian returned to his regular, affable self, as if waking from a long, strange coma.

Despite all his apparent mental immersion in the role, however, Murray the actor never really disappears into the character, and his performance as Thompson is not markedly different from his 1979 performance as Trip Harrison in Meatballs or his later depiction of Carl Spackler in Caddyshack. If anything, his Thompson seems like the bastard child of Carl and Trip, with a few Gonzo quotes and props thrown into the mix.

Johnny Depp also palled around with Thompson before, during and after his portrayal of the man, but the actor’s performance as “Raoul Duke” in Gilliam’s adaptation of the allegedly unfilmable Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is a believably stylized depiction of a more fully-realized character, grounding the film’s bombastic excesses with deadpan wit and an undercurrent of genuine sadness for the lost utopian dreams of the '60s counter-culture.

In the final analysis, Depp (arguably) offers a better performance in a better film, but after Gilliam’s surrealistic take (and Benicio del Toro’s intense but off-putting performance as Duke/Thompson’s friend, Dr. Gonzo/Oscar Acosta), Where The Buffalo Roam’s more laid-back, relatively naturalistic approach, while meandering (and, well, bad), still makes me wish for an accurate, insightful biopic of the real Hunter S. Thompson, beyond all the same old fear and loathing.

Benicio del Toro is “The Wolfman”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:15:00 GMT

Entertainment Weekly has your first look at Benicio del Toro in full makeup for his starring role as The Wolfman. We know what you’re thinking: Doesn’t del Toro already look like a wolfman? Why would he need any makeup? Just look at this still of Jack Nicholson in 1994’s Wolf; he looks like he just rolled out of bed and stumbled straight to the set. But apparently Rick Baker still needs to make a living, so despite the fact that he’s already been down this road with American Werewolf in London, the legendary makeup man is back at it. Hit the jump to see del Toro in all his furry glory.

Despite all the newfangled advances in special effects, Baker has put his werewolf together the old-fashioned way: “The part that covers his nose and his brow is what we call an appliance. It's made up of a foam, latex piece with tissue-thin edges that covers part of Benicio's face and blends into his own skin. Then we have a wig and dentures that change his teeth into the giant Wolfman teeth. Most of the hair on his face is what we call 'laid.' It's actually loose hair that we apply little bits at a time with glue to his face. It's very much the way the Wolfman was done in the [1941] original [starring Lon Chaney].”

The movie, directed by Jurassic Park III’s Joe Johnston, is due next year. Check out more pictures and the rest of the Baker interview here.

DVD Digest for March 4, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

After last week's release of the mammoth Criterion four-disc set of The Last Emperor, it was sort of inevitable that this week would be something of a letdown. Still, this week has a number of worthy releases it can call its own.

DVD of the Week: One of the most thought-provoking documentaries of 2007, Amir Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That (Sony) tells the story of little Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old girl whose paintings won her acclaim as a modern-art prodigy until a segment on 60 Minutes II cast doubt on her authorship of the works. What began as a human-interest story about a little girl who enjoyed painting and turned out to be surprisingly good at it becomes a hornet's nest of issues — everything from how much of the value of art comes from the story behind it to the concept of modern art itself. Most relevantly, Bar-Lev takes the role of the media in building people up only to tear them down again, even addressing his own complicity in this process. Most impressively, the film does all this — and more besides — all in the course of eighty-three minutes. Also included on the DVD are an audio commentary with the director as well as several documentaries, one about the film, and the other featuring an interview with New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman. A must-see for anyone interested in art or documentary filmmaking.

Other new releases coming to DVD this week include: Sean Penn's Oscar-snubbed Into the Wild (Paramount); Zack Helm's Roald Dahl ripoff homage Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (Fox); Susanne Bier's melodrama Things We Lost in the Fire (Dreamworks), which boasts a fine Benicio Del Toro lead performance; and of course Steven Seagal's latest direct-to-DVD release, Pistol Whipped (Sony). Keep your eyes peeled to Vern's site for his no doubt imminent review. Also, for anime fans, this week brings the R1 release of the Japanese animated series Blood+ Part 1 (Sony), comprising the first twenty-five episodes of the series, as well as Blood+ Volume 1 (Sony), which only includes the first five episodes.

On the classics front, the most notable release is TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Volume 2, a three-disc set that includes five pre-Code classics — The Divorcee (1929), A Free Soul (1931), Three on a Match (1932), Female (1933), and Night Nurse (1931) — accompanied by a new TCM documentary about pre-Code Hollywood. This week also sees the release of new editions of 101 Dalmatians (Disney), 12 Angry Men (MGM), and Mrs. Doubtfire (Fox), as well as Magnum P.I. Season 8 (Universal), and Blu-Ray-only releases of Ice Age (Fox) and 2002's The Rookie (Disney).

Finally, back by popular demand is this week's Huddleston Corner, in which we spotlight films being released in the soon-to-be-defunct HD-DVD format. This week's new HD releases:
Into the Wild (Paramount)
No Reservations (Warner)
Things We Lost in the Fire (Dreamworks)

Condolences!

Grumbling About Mumbling: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Other Mushmouths

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Ever since Frank Sinatra christened Marlon Brando "Mumbles" on the set of Guys and Dolls, inarticulate and incomprehensible speech has been a mainstay of American cinema, particularly among Method actors. David Jenkins of The Guardian has had enough, and it's Philip Seymour Hoffman who has pushed him to the breaking point.

Jenkins' snippy piece begins: "So there they are, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney, emoting like nobody's business after they've buried the woman who was, respectively, their mother and their wife, in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. There's a silence, and then Hoffman speaks — whereupon Finney slaps him. It's clearly a crucial moment, this explosion of violence, but I've yet to talk to anyone who could hear what Hoffman actually said."

Jenkins goes on to bemoan the mushmouthed stylings of the cast of Charlie Wilson's War (including Hoffman again), Miami Vice (with non-American Colin Farrell cited as a prime offender) and even There Will Be Blood. (He lets the Coens off the hook, noting critic Anne Billson's explanation for the clarity of speech in No Country for Old Men: "The Coen brothers are famously proud of their dialogue, so they make sure you can hear it."

The piece traces screen mumbling back to Brando, of course, but also pins some of the blame on Robert Altman for his trademark overlapping dialogue. It's a little hard to believe that nearly forty years after MASH critics and filmmakers could still be uptight about Altman's brilliant cacophonies, but Sexy Beast producer Hercules Bellville agrees. "I've got no problems with 1940s films; then only Peter Lorre had a strange accent. Now there are all sorts of odd accents and dialects, and the colloquial is often rapid and slurred. But technically, there's no reason for it."

These guys are way too uptight; after all, it's not as if American audiences have never had trouble deciphering British speech, and you don't hear us complaining. To quote Benicio Del Toro in The Usual Suspects, "Gbaughg thfllwoogha schwfjflhaw."