The Screengrab : bonnie and clyde

Morning Deal Report: The A-Team and Lara Croft Report For Duty

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

So there I was getting all worked up over the notion of a Bonnie and Clyde remake starring Hilary Duff, and right behind my back Joe Carnahan and Ridley Scott were putting together a big-screen version of The A-Team. “Fox has struggled to find a way to exploit the branded TV show while avoiding the series' campy tone,” Variety reports, and if that doesn’t get your hopes up, nothing will. “Carnahan and the Scott brothers say they will use the original premise of the series as the template for an action film. In the original, four Vietnam vets convicted of armed robbery escape from military prison and became do-gooder mercenaries. The Middle East will replace Vietnam as the place the four did their tour of duty, but Carnahan said the origin story is the jumping-off point.” Honestly, I don’t know how to feel about that – I’m waiting for Dirk Benedict to tell me.

I guess the only thing that would top that would be another Lara Croft movie. But that will never happen, right? Right? “Warners Bros. and producer Dan Lin are in early development on a a reboot of Tomb Raider, the popular video game action franchise,” per The Hollywood Report. “The new project, however, is expected to revamp the character and her mission and bear little resemblance to the original pictures. It will reimagine the origins of the character, her love interest and the main villain.” That means no Angelina Jolie, kiddies.

What do Truman Capote and Steve McQueen have in common? Dueling biopics, of course. We already told you about this one, but now “producer David Foster (The Mask of Zorro) unveiled plans that he is spearheading a project based on a memoir penned by McQueen's first wife, Neile McQueen Toffel,” Variety reports.

Related:
How Tom Cruise Became Angelina Jolie
Yesterday's Hits: The Towering Inferno

How Not to Interview Faye Dunaway: Latest in a Series

Phil Nugent — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

At the Guardian, Xan Brooks has a diverting account of how he came to get ejected from Faye Dunaway's presence while conducting her "first British press interview in nearly 20 years ". Dunaway is across the pond for the Raindance Film Festival showing of her latest film, Flick, a horror movie directed by David Howard. Brooks opens his account by describing how Howard listed for him all "the things I am absolutely not to ask her. Firstly, there must be no mention of Mommie Dearest, the Joan Crawford biopic credited with destroying Dunaway's career. Nor must I ask her about Andrew Lloyd Webber, who bumped her from the Los Angeles production of Sunset Boulevard in 1994; or about her adult son, who may or may not be adopted; or about the cosmetic surgery that she may or may not have undergone. Is that it? 'Yes,' says Howard. 'I think that's the lot.' He turns out to be wrong." Brooks veered into a minefield when he chose to ask her about Roman Polanski's Chinatown and how much reports of tensions on its set might have damaged her career. ("Oh," Dunaway says, "The Roman thing.") When our intrepid correspondent asks the ladylike Dunaway if it's true that she once threw a cup of urine at her pint-sized director, the interview wraps itself up in short order.

Before the meltdown, Dunaway gives what sounds like an amusing performance, half elegant and half dippy, as an aging star who may only be a faded name to younger moviegoers and who seems surprisingly intent on being judged a creature of regal dignity. In Flick, she plays "a one-armed Memphis cop on the trail of a zombie Teddy boy." Brooks marches right out onto thin ice at the start, mentioning that Howard has said that in casting her, "he was taking his lead from Roger Corman, the B-movie producer who made a habit of hiring older Hollywood legends such as Ray Milland to appear in his movies" Dunaway's response: "I think he was going for - not old Hollywood, let's not say that. But maybe a little of the old-style glamour." Despite the dragon-lady demeanor that made Dunaway stand out in the '60s and '70s and that made her a neat fit for both the role of Joan Crawford and the nostalgic setting of Chinatown, Dunaway describes her breakout role as Bonnie Parker as the one "that's closest to me. I was a southern girl and so was Bonnie. We share the frustrations of living in that small, limited environment - dying to get out and move forward in the world. That was part of my makeup as a girl." Cut short though it was, the conversation does give you a feeling that you might have glimpsed something about Dunaway, and why she hasn't done better at staying afloat in the last couple of decades: women have to fight to stay alive in Hollywood, and Dunaway, who clearly has the resources to be a fighter, doesn't want to be seen that way: it conflicts with her surprising desire to be seen as a lady. She doesn't seem to grasp that Brooks is trying to help her out, not trap her, when he suggests that the nasty stories told against her for having been difficult might "come down to a case of Hollywood sexism, I ask her. After all, nobody ever complained about her former co-stars Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen or Marlon Brando being a little bit wild or rebellious. But Dunaway doesn't bite: she can't think what I mean."

DVD Digest for April 15, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For those of you looking to spend this year's tax refund check on DVDs, this won't be a particularly good week for you. But there is at least one exception...

Had you going there, didn't I? My well-documented soft spot for Dr. Uwe Boll notwithstanding, the real gem this week is The Criterion Collection's release of Blast of Silence. Criterion has long been beloved for its top-notch DVD editions of canonical favorites, but just as important in my mind is their tendency to unearth forgotten treasures. Allen Baron's Blast of Silence definitely qualifies, a grim, gritty noir about a hitman carrying out an assignment during the Christmas season. In many ways, the film feels ahead of its time, with Lionel Stander's narration- delivered in the second person- translating wonderfully to our post-Tarantino age. Blast of Silence is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation, and this Criterion release should ensure it reaches the audience it deserves.

Of course, if it's something new you're looking for, there are a couple of those this week. For people looking for indie quirk, there's two different versions of the Oscar-nominated juggernaut Juno (Fox, also Blu-Ray), the two-disc special edition of which includes featurettes called Diablo Cody Is Totally Boss, Jason Reitman for Shizz, and Honest to Blog! Creating Juno. But if you've already gotten all the Juno you can handle, or you simply craving characters who don't talk in grating sound bites, there's also MGM's Lars and the Real Girl, which isn't perfect but which I preferred to its better-hyped counterpart.

In addition, this week also sees the release of Sidney Lumet's "comeback" vehicle Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I wasn't nearly as big a fan of the film as Scott von Doviak was, but it's good to see Lumet still making films that are worth getting excited about.

And I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the release of Dr. Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (Fox). After catching this in theatres, I remarked to my friends that it was "not good, but kind of awesome," exactly the kind of movie that I would have enjoyed when I was ten years old and fantasy movies weren't as popular as they are now. If nothing else, it's more entertaining than this week's other think-at-your-own-peril new release, Aliens vs. Predator- Requiem (Fox, also Blu-Ray).

As for classics, there's not much outside of our DVD of the week. Fans of late, logy Lean films can get their fix with the release of the A Passage to India Collector's Edition (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Also of note is MGM's two-pack of Mannequin and Mannequin 2: On the Move, for those who are so inclined. And for TV fans, there's The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2 (Universal), MGM's Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection (which is missing the original theatrical feature), and American Dad, Volume 3.

Finally, we arrive at the moment where I turn over the column to my friend and yours, Mr. David Huddleston. Not too many condolences this week, only Warner Brothers' HD-DVD release of Bonnie and Clyde. Still, Mr. Huddleston wishes that his condolences weren't necessary, and that the DVD companies would take the hint and get on the Blu-Ray bandwagon so he could make other, more enjoyable plans for his Tuesday mornings.

Forgotten Films: "Penn & Teller Get Killed" (1989)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In the last few days, we have seen the director Arthur Penn honored by the air of celebration attending the special two-disc DVD of his greatest film, Bonnie and Clyde. We have also seen the suffering caused by the comedian-magician Penn Jillette's attempt to dance with the stars. Weirdly enough, there actually is a connection between these two, besides the fact that one of them insists on wearing the other's last name as his own first name. The last theatrical feature directed by Arthur Penn turns out to have been Penn & Teller Get Killed, which was the first, and will in all likelihood remain the only, movie vehicle starring Penn and his silent partner, Teller. It is not readily apparent who thought it would be a good idea to have these people work together, but maybe it had something to do with Arthur Penn's reputation for finding new ways to show violence on screen, a propensity that included a willingness to use it for darkly comic effects. As you might have guessed from the title, Penn & Teller Get Killed has a morbid edge to it that links it to the unsettling, neo-carny vibe that the duo sought to achieve in their celebrated stage act in the 1980s. (The movie, which Penn & Teller wrote, was actually made in the mid-80s, when the two were frequent guest attractions on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman, but ended up sitting on the shelf for a few years before being giving a flyspeck of a theatrical release.) It opens with a talk-show segment in which Penn proffers a jive invitation to any psychos in the audience to stalk and try to kill him, to liven things up. This sets in motion the kind of events you'd expect it to. It also serves as a cue for such menaces to society as the playwright Christopher Durang and the character villain specialist David Patrick Kelly to drop by for a paycheck. (There's also a brief performance as a thug by a hungry-looking, pre-fame Tom Sizemore, as well as a charming turn by the late Caitlin Clarke, who's probably best known to moviegoers as the heroine of the 1981 Dragonslayer.)

The movie's best scene is its opening, which depicts the act that Penn & Teller do on that talk show. They strap on gravity boots and hang upside down from a bar, while the camerawork makes it appear to those watching at home that they're right-side up. Then they proceed to whip out playing cards and other objects, so that when they let gravity do its work, it looks on TV as if the stuff is flying upwards. This actually duplicates a trick that Penn & Teller once did on SNL; when they actually did it on TV, to the accompaniment of a braying studio audience, it just looked weird to the home viewers who had no way of being in on the joke, and they must have relished the opportunity that the movie gave them to try it again, and the extra layer of point of view that the movie adds — showing the movie audience what's going on, while showing TV viewers scratching their heads — makes it work brilliantly. Unfortunately, once the plot-setting apparatus is done and out of the way, the movie flatlines quickly. It doesn't really have a plot so much as a series of pranks that the characters play on each other, and though it's meant to work as a series of pranks on the audience, after you've noticed the pattern you settle in and start to wait to find out what's really going on in whatever scene you're watching. So not only is it not funny or surprising when the reveals come, but you spend most of the movie feeling that you're smarter than the people onscreen. It does have its fascinaton, though: it's a cerebral, overconceptualized misfire, which isn't what you expect from a bad vehicle for a couple of hot comedians — more Cabin Boy than Corky Romano, I guess. (It's also arguably a more interesting and honorable failure than the previous couple of pictures that Arthur Penn had directed, Target and Dead of Winter.) So should you give it a look sometime, if you ever get the chance? Perhaps luckily for you and me both, the odds of your ever getting the chance are distant enough to almost make that a moot point.

DVD Digest for March 25, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

D'oh! While I was at work today avoiding doing anything of importance, I discovered that I'd completely forgotten the release of David Lynch's Lost Highway. Then arrived home only to find that Eclipse's William Klein box set has been pushed back to May. Some days, I wonder if I'm not better off staying in bed.

DVD of the Week Two Months From Now: In a week with no truly noteworthy new films or world-beating classics arriving on DVD for the first time, I'd like to throw some light on Eclipse's awesome-looking box set, The Delirious Fictions of William Klein. I say "awesome-looking" because I haven't been able to catch up with any of his fiction films before now, and I only know his work by his 1969 film Muhammad Ali, The Greatest. Klein was an acclaimed photographer before making the leap to cinema — and to France — and his fiction films were biting social satires that starred a number of leading French actors of the day, including Delphine Seyrig, Sami Frey, and Andre Dussolier. All due respect to Eclipse's treatments of lesser-known works by Ozu, Lubitsch, and Kurosawa, but I believe that box sets like this one and last year's Raymond Bernard box are even more valuable to lovers of film, spotlighting unique works by fascinating filmmakers that wouldn't see the light of day otherwise. Sadly, now that I've whetted your appetite for William Klein, now you'll have to wait until May 20 to purchase this box, due to a last-minute schedule change by Eclipse. Oh well- at least now you know.

Also of note this week is Warner's Two-Disc Special Edition of Bonnie and Clyde (also Blu-Ray), which is available by itself or as part of a, "Ultimate Colector's Edition" containing plenty of memorabilia. Also of note is The Warner Bros. Pictures Gangsters Collection Vol. 3, featuring six films including Black Legion (1937), Brother Orchid (1940), Lady Killer (1933), Mayor of Hell (1933), Picture Snatcher (1933), and Smart Money (1931). In addition, MGM releases three DVD editions of the Yul Brynner vehicles Kings of the Sun, Solomon and Sheba, and Taras Bulba. And let's not forget the extended cut of Walk the Line (Fox).

By comparison, the pickings for new films on DVD is pretty meager, with only The Kite Runner (Paramount) and Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (Sony) arriving in stores. But collectors of TV on DVD have a bigger selection to choose from, with Universal releasing Battlestar Galactica: Season Three, Sliders Season 4, and The Invisible Man Season 1, and Sony countering with Party of Five Season 3 and all new editions of all five seasons of The Shield.

Finally, the beloved Mr. Huddleston is taking a week's vacation from this column, with no HD releases hitting the shelves today. How long this well-deserved rest will be remains to be seen.

Take Five: True Crime

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Getting wide release this weekend is Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job, also known as the movie that seems like it should be directed by Guy Ritchie but isn't. It is, however, based on an infamous 1971 vault heist which has gained recent noteriety not so much for the unsolved crime — although it was one of the biggest bank jobs in British history at the time — but the circumstances of its aftermath: what seemed to be an incredibly newsworthy story was hardly written about in the days following thanks to a "D notice" that served to gag the press. Speculation as to why this would be the case has raged for thirty-five years, and now, Donaldson's film (informed by a newly popular conspiracy theory involving a royal sex scandal) attempts to answer the question definitively, if fictionally. Nothing makes for an exciting movie like crime, and nothing makes a crime movie have that little extra edge than the slightest elements of truth. True crime movies have been a fixture of the silver screen almost since their inception; there's so many to choose from that we don't even begin to pretend this list is definitive. It's just a few of our favorites, each for a different reason. Line them all up on a cold night, watch them in a row, and thank your lucky stars this never happened to you...

THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955)

A little-seen and underrated noir thriller from the genre's waning days, Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story eschews the highly stylized approach of many of its contemporaries and goes for an understated, gritty style that allows it to function almost like a documentary. The story is built around the then-infamous case of Phenix City, Alabama, which at the time was so thoroughly controlled by mobsters (who became fat from prostitution and gambling fed by nearby military bases) that they operated with near-complete impunity. When Alabama's attorney general was assassinated there, it became the first city since the Civil War to have martial law declared without the occurence of a natural disaster. Raw, exciting, and remarkably violent for its time, The Phenix City Story is a forgotten classic of its time.

BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

Sometimes, what makes a true crime masterpiece so powerful isn't its proximity to the truth, but its distance from it. Arthur Penn's brilliant crime drama, which made a handful of careers and set the tone for the highly personal studio filmmaking of the 1970s, was based on the real story of outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, but only insofar as it gave him pegs on which to hang his story. In real life, Bonnie and Clyde were considerably less attractive than Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and even more morally unappealing; they were, in fact, vicious and contemptible heels, little more than brutal murderers, whose legend grew out of a nation obsessed with pulp fiction and crime as escapism. It's a testament to the magic of storytelling that they came to the big screen so completely altered.

THE KRAYS (1990)

For nearly a decade during London's Swinging Sixties, the undisputed overlords of the organized crime underworld were the brothers Ronald and Reginald Kray. Before their own penchant for bloody mayhem brought them down, they were the most feared individuals in the criminial demimonde, ruling their empire through torture and intimidation. Peter Medak's colorful, engaging biopic about the brothers is bouyed by its enjoyable evocation of London in the '60s as well as a remarkable performance as the twins by real-life brothers Gary and Martin Kemp — like the Krays, fraternal twins, but unlike them, best known to the world as the leaders of the 1980s New Romantic pop band Spandau Ballet! It's the first major role for both Kemps, and they tackle it with such gusto and skill it's surprising they never became major stars, though both stuck with the acting game.

DAHMER (2002)

Serial killers are a staple food of horror and thriller directors, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a spate of low-budget psychological chillers all based on the real-life exploits of actual mass murderers. Most of them were little more than slightly pretentious splatter flicks, but Dahmer — written and directed by David Jacobson — stood out as the class of the bunch. Resting on a smart script, a genuinely stark and chilling mood, and a fantastic lead performance by Jeremy Renner as the infamous Milwaukee cannibal, Dahmer is a compulsively watchable and truly terrifying movie. Its power comes not from gore or mayhem, but from the simplicity of its vision and the way in which it involves us emotionally with Dahmer while all the time creeping us ever closer to a full revelation of the depths of his madness.

CRAZY LOVE (2007)

One of the most bizarre true-crime documentaries ever made, this astonishing film from last year relies for its watchability on the fact that it's a story so unbelievable, it could only be true. It traces the improbable relationship of influential New York attorney Burt Pugach, who carried on an affair with a lovely young woman named Linda Riss. In 1959, Riss broke off the affair with the married Pugach, after which, enraged and terrified that she would start seeing someone else, he hired thugs to throw lye in her face, blinding and permanently scarring her. This hideous act would be the end of many true-crime movies, but here, it's only the beginning: sentenced to fourteen years in prison, Pugach went on to write Riss constantly while he served his time — and eventually, when he was released, the two were married!

Movie of the Year(s)

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:30:00 GMT

Movie geeks like your humble authors here at the Screengrab are no different than geeks of any other sort. That is to say, we are compulsive listmakers, inveterate rankers and categorizers, and the sort of people who will happily mouth off our opinions about things that happened years before we were born. And we're proud to say that over at the Onion A.V. Club, the reviewing staff (friends of this program, as they say in the biz) have found a delightful way of upholding the tradition by combining all three of those geeky tendencies: in their enjoyable new "My Favorite Movie Year" feature, each of their film reviewers picks one year in the past they think of as an exceptional one for film and ranks the top five movies that debuted in that year. The exercise kicked off a week ago when Noel Murray discussed the best films of 1974, and this week, the redoubtable Keith Phipps takes a look at 1967, singling out Bonnie and Clyde, Play Time, Point Blank, The Graduate and Two for the Road as reasons that year was particularly praiseworthy. (Sure, Keith. How quickly we forget Hillbillies in a Haunted House.) Next week should also be worth looking in on as the always-amusing Nathan Rabin picks the best of 1994.