The Screengrab : bugs bunny

The Screengrab Holiday Special: Movies We're Thankful For (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:15:00 GMT

I grew up right next door to Thanksgiving Town, USA: Plymouth, Massachusetts, former home of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians and future home of Plymouth Rock Studios and a nice big casino.

My next door neighbors used to work at Plimoth Plantation, where docent actors dress up in 17th century drag and mosey up and down the streets of a life-size replica Pilgrim settlement, discussing crops and Calvinism, while modern Native Americans in traditional buckskin attire give their side of the story in a nearby encampment.

So I like to think I know a thing or two about Thanksgiving. And let me tell you: it’s not all about the yams.

In fact, before the Macy’s Day Parade and the advent of that delicious Brundlefly monstrosity known as Turducken, the fourth Thursday of November was all about chowing down eel and corn and celebrating a bountiful harvest. In fact, as I learned on a recent visit to Plimoth Plantation, the name for the annual kick-off to the Christmas shopping season is actually a compound word that literally means “giving thanks”!

And so, as we here at the Screengrab prepare our traditional Turkey Day feast of pretzel sticks, jelly beans, two slices of toast and a handful of popcorn, we’d like to just take a few moments to express our gratitude for the people, places and movies that made us the full-on film geeks we are today.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM THE SCREENGRAB!

ANDREW OSBORNE IS THANKFUL FOR:

WHAT’S UP, DOC? (1950 & 1972)

Forget Mickey Mouse: Bugs Bunny was there from the start, teaching me the importance of carrots, proper directions to Albuquerque and a wised-up appreciation of life (for all its feathered frenemies, megalomaniacal Martians and gun-toting Fudds). So I was a bit disappointed when I realized What’s Up, Doc? (the first movie I can remember seeing in a theater) wasn’t a cartoon...but Peter Bogdanovich’s madcap screwball homage soon won me over with its igneous rocks and silly accents and, especially, that endless, blissful car chase through the streets, alleys and staircases of San Francisco (and, eventually, San Francisco Bay). All that (plus a gratifying act three cameo by Mr. Bunny himself!) made this goofy-smart romantic comedy my first favorite movie, and it only got better with time as I grew up and came to appreciate the chemistry of Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand (both at their cinematic finest) and the comedic brilliance of the irreplaceable Madeline Kahn, Austin Pendleton and Kenneth Mars. But the real reason this movie’s on the list is so I can say thank you to my film geek parents for always bringing me to whatever movie they went to go see on a Saturday night (even when it scared the bejesus out of me), thus instilling a life-long love of pop culture that’s guided my cinematic view of the world ever since. (Thanks, Mom & Dad!)

STAR WARS (1977)

I’ve already written an embarrassing number of posts about the life-changing religious experience of seeing this movie as an excitable, impressionable ten year old nerd, but looking back on it now, I can only say...George Lucas, all is forgiven. (And besides, what’s Thanksgiving without the Star Wars Holiday Special?)

THE BIG CHILL (1983)

Given the embarrassing Baby Boomer reverence for Lawrence Kasdan’s self-congratulatory, navel-gazing Love Generation touchstone of growing up and selling out (not to mention the way the film pretty much ruined all the songs on its mega-hit Motown soundtrack by making them go-to clichés for every subsequent entry in the “Diane Keaton dancing around a living room” genre), this one almost wound up on last week’s Guilty Pleasures list. But despite all the people who deride the film as just a shallow rip-off of John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus Seven, I have no guilt and nothing but love for The Big Chill. I first saw it after a particularly painful orthodontist’s appointment in my junior year of high school, and though I may not have been the intended target audience, I took the movie instantly to heart, partly for its evocation of the sixties (an era I romanticized desperately in the Just Say No Reagan eighties), but mostly for its celebration of the enduring power of friendship.

JOHN WATERS & DIVINE

Then, after high school, I stopped Saying No and dove headfirst into the psychedelic wonderland of college, that freaky, institutionalized Rumspringa when America’s sons and daughters move away from home and go batshit crazy for a year or three. After spending the first eighteen years of my life as an upright goody two-shoes, I was itching to break bad and take a walk on the trashy side...and when it comes to desperate living, I quickly discovered there was no better tour guide than John Waters and his large and lovely muse, Divine. From Mondo Trasho to Hairspray, Baltimore’s favorite son and fake daughter warped my young adult mind with their glorious bad taste, healthy disrespect for convention and pre-punk aesthetic, while also serving as self-made role models of DIY ingenuity for those determined to live a life less ordinary.

DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)

In 1993, my then-girlfriend and I attended an L.A. cast and crew screening of Dazed and Confused (with, if memory serves, my future Screengrab colleague Scott Von Doviak). We didn’t know any of the soon-to-be-famous actors in the stellar ensemble cast (including Matthew McConaughey, Adam Goldberg, Parker Posey and Ben Affleck) when the lights went down, but when the lights came up, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by characters we’d only just met but felt like we’d known forever: hey, look! It’s O’Bannion and Darla! And over there! It’s Wooderson! (All right, all right, all right!) A few months later, I got dumped by the aforementioned girlfriend, but numerous subsequent screenings of Dazed and Confused helped to ease the pain, and today I remember Richard Linklater’s last day of school and first night of summer vacation at least as fondly as my actual high school experience.

PULP FICTION (1994)

Some movies you see and forget just as soon as the lights come up. Pulp Fiction was not one of those movies. In 1994, I spent every last dime I had (and a lot of dimes that I didn’t have) attempting to surf the Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes indie renaissance with my own no-budget 16mm production, Apocalypse Bop (starring the indomitable Mr. Von Doviak), which I’d spent the summer directing back in my home town near Thanksgiving Town, USA. At the time, I was living in Los Angeles, and so when the movie wrapped, I decided to road trip back to the West Coast with a couple of friends from the Bop shoot. Stopping for breakfast in Austin, Texas, one of those friends met a girl and couldn’t stop thinking about her, so when we finally reached California, he called her up and asked if she wanted to go see Pulp Fiction with him on opening night. She said yes, and so he turned around and flew right back to Austin. Meanwhile, my return to L.A. woke me up from my filmmaking fandango to the cold, hard reality that I was unemployed, with no prospects and no money to pay my rent. I had exactly twenty dollars to my name. And I’m happy to say I spent that twenty dollars on popcorn and a ticket to go see the opening night of Pulp Fiction with my pals in the San Fernando Valley, while my other friend was watching the same movie on the same night on his cross-country date in The Lone Star State. He wound up staying in Austin for the next several years, and days after watching Jules and Vincent Vega strut across the screen to the strains of “Misirlou,” my own bacon got snatched from the brink of disaster by an out-of-the-blue offer to go work on a war movie in the Philippines. And so I’m eternally grateful to have once been young and foolish enough to have those kinds of adventures, living in extremis at exactly the right time and with exactly the right people the night Quentin Tarantino got medieval on our ass.

SXSW, THE PROVINCETOWN FILM FESTIVAL & THE MEAT CITY BEATNIKS (2009)

And speaking of Austin, the city of Slacker has been, at different times, my literal and spiritual home away from home for years now, and never is it more glamorous (or crowded) than the middle of March, when the capitol of Texas plays host to the South-By-Southwest music and film festival, a fantastic collision of pop culture, booze and barbecue that makes Thanksgiving look like Arbor Day. Every spring, it renews my faith in the vaunted “indie film” spirit (even though I’m old enough to know better), and then every summer, I take another, mellower sip of the indie Kool-Aid (not to mention the world’s best Bloody Marys) at the Provincetown Film Festival, with John Waters presiding as patron saint in the same way Richard Linklater is the Mayor of South-By...and with all that friggin’ indie spirit washing over me, it was only a matter of time before I succumbed once again to its siren song, so I’ll just wrap up this list with thanks to my collaborators on The Meat City Beatniks, an indie film musical (co-written by me, Scott Von Doviak, Eric Jacobson and Jim Dryden) and starring Elliot Dort, Ben Gallant, Sheree Bass, Matthew Woodward, Rob McKim, Ms. Amar, Joe Gallo, Michael Sesling, Kellianne MacFarlane, Bill Christensen and Amy Jeglinski-Osborne...a production which (thankfully) I mostly managed to wrap in 2008 and which will (hopefully) premiere in 2009...so stay tuned! (And have a Happy Thanksgiving!)

Click Here For More Thanks From Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce & Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Contributor: Andrew Osborne

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Features Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

PERSEPOLIS (2007)

In the same way graphic novels like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis have expanded the thematic possibilities of pen and ink comics beyond run-of-the-mill superhero adventures and the romantic entanglements of the gang at Riverdale High, so too does this pristine cinematic adaptation demonstrate the ability of animation to lend a necessary artistic distance to depictions of events that would simply be too grim or painful to watch otherwise. Satrapi’s autobiographical tale (which she co-scripted and co-directed with her graphic novel collaborator Vincent Paronnaud) tackles big subjects like the Iranian Revolution, Islamic fundamentalism and the agony of adolescence with visual flair and heartfelt humanity, while the voice performances (by an effervescent Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve and her daughter, Chiara Mastroianni (as Satrapi) are far more three-dimensional than many of 2007’s live action female roles.

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (1988)

On the one hand, the inclusion of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a bit of a cheat, since parts of the movie are live action...on the other hand, there’s a long tradition of films that combine ‘toons with real people, from Gertie the Dinosaur and Mary Poppins to Paula Abdul’s timeless duet with MC Skat Cat in her video for “Opposites Attract.” More important, though, is the unique and historic worlds-colliding nature of the project, which brings together a veritable who’s who of animation's golden age gliterrati in a mainline pleasure shot of pop culture ecstasy equivalent to a Star Wars sequel (NOT written by George Lucas) where Han, Chewie, Luke, Leia, R2D2, C3P0 and Yoda somehow team up with Captain Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard and all the rest of the Star Trek gang on Babylon Five to help Ellen Ripley battle Aliens. Or, to put it in slightly less embarrassingly geeky terms: the scene where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse appear together on screen for the first and only time kicks the historic Robert De Niro/Al Pacino summit in Michael Mann’s Heat right square in the keister. I remember watching Roger Rabbit for the first time in a theater and hearing an audible gasp from the audience at the moment in the film when a live-action studio exec pulls up the shade in his office, only to find Dumbo hovering just outside: just the kind of giddy, weightless moment of gleeful surprise that animation was made for...plus, the controversy surrounding the public’s laser-disc discovery of a single-frame image of Jessica Rabbit with no panties was a perfect farewell joke from animation’s salty past as it passed its torch to the gleaming digital age.

THE INCREDIBLES (2004)

Brad Bird has developed a reputation as nothing less than a one-man Coen Brothers of the animation world. Like the Coens, his movies are crammed full of homages and references to other films; like the Coens, he’s proven adept at handling films in a wide variety of genres; like the Coens, he loves camera pyrotechnics and visual tricks of all sorts; and like the Coens, his idiosyncratic personality comes through in every project he tackles. The ex-Simpsons staffer has grown into the most immediately recognizable directorial presence in American animation, and this stunning (and often hilarious) take on the mythology of superheroes is possibly his greatest achievement. It’s almost pointless to praise the astonishing visuals, which, even four years down the road, don’t seem to have been surpassed by the ever-changing technology curve; but the real treat here is the deft blend of a solid action story featuring plenty of physical humor and rock-‘em-sock-‘em fight scenes for the kids with a fantastically sophisticated storytelling style for the adults, including visual callback to everything from Saul Bass and James Bond to the Fantastic Four. It’s also a movie well worth owning on DVD, with a ton of bonuses including kid-pleasing animated shorts and a whole cornucopia of hidden jokes for the grown-ups. The Incredibles is that rare breed of movie that really does have something for everyone.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988)

1988 was a banner year for Japanese animation. While Akira was opening up new vistas for the possibilities of “Japanimation” to convey dark and heavy sci-fi/action themes, Isao Takahata was showing the world that the same medium was capable of telling small, quiet, emotional stories that had just as much power and impact. Based on a tragicomic memoir by Akiyuki Nosaka, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of a young Japanese boy who, along with his sister, faces the massive changes and upheavals that came with the Second World War. Takahata had himself survived the bombing of Hiroshima, and the book struck a particularly personal chord with him; he decided he would make his animated adaptation – produced by Studio Ghibli at the same time as Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro – as realistic as possible, including the decision, unusual in animation involving children, to cast age-appropriate voice actors in all the roles. One of the most shocking things about the film is that it begins on a jarringly tragic note, with the death of the narrator: the rest of the film chronicles the inevitable events that lead up to it, devastatingly portraying how, in trying times, even those with the best of intentions can make irrevocably bad decisions. An incredibly moving, terrible sad, and beautifully made film, and an unsparing portrait of the eternal costs of war.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Four, & Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

Yesterday's Hits: Smokey and the Bandit (1977, Hal Needham)

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It may be hard to remember now, but there was a time when Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in Hollywood. Throughout the seventies and early eighties, Reynolds sold millions of tickets using mostly his easy grin and patented good ol’boy charm. And no Reynolds movie made more money than 1977’s bootlegging comedy Smokey and the Bandit. Yet, as Reynolds aficionado Larry Aydlette said in his recent Burt Reynolds blogathon, Smokey has lost a lot of its luster today. Many critics look upon it with scorn, and more importantly the film has taken on the air of a movie that’s more often remembered than revisited. So where did the love go?

What made Smokey a hit? The easy answer is Reynolds, but there was more to the film’s popularity than Burt. The seventies saw a rise in movies marketed to Southern audiences- a rise that helped to contribute to Reynolds’ box-office success- and Smokey and the Bandit came along at just the right time to benefit from this movement. But Smokey was a big hit all over the country, not just down South. Audiences loved the character of Bandit, the legendary outlaw truck driver who was smooth and confident but also life-sized. The movie also benefited from the era’s CB radio craze, and contributed more than a few colorful expressions to the vernacular. Smokey and the Bandit had something for everyone to enjoy- comedy, vehicular mayhem, anti-authority sentiments, a little romance, Bandit’s iconic Pontiac Trans Am- and as such it reached a broad base of moviegoers who made Smokey the second-biggest hit of 1977 (after Star Wars) and kept the film in some theatres for years on end.

What happened? Reynolds may have been the era’s biggest draw, but his biggest downfall has always been an unfortunate inability to discern quality from junk. While Reynolds occasionally leveraged his Smokey popularity to take on more adventurous projects (1979’s Starting Over, 1981’s Reynolds-directed Sharky’s Machine), more typical were the rash of Smokey sequels and ripoffs designed to piggyback on the original film’s success. So began a string of Bandit-like cocky showoff roles for Burt, most of which are indistinguishable today. By the mid-eighties after Burt had made three Smokeys, two Cannonball Runs, and many other movies in this vein, audiences decided they’d been to this well too often, and Reynolds’ popularity went into free-fall.

Does Smokey and the Bandit still work? That’s a big 10-4 there, good buddy. The plot is simplicity itself- Bandit (Reynolds) and best pal Snowman (regular Reynolds costar Jerry Reed) take a bet that they can make a round trip from Atlanta to Texarkana, Texas and back in 28 hours, bringing back 400 cases of (then-illegal in Georgia) Coors beer for Big Enos and Little Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams). But after they’ve picked up the beer and started heading eastbound and down towards home, Bandit picks up a runaway bride who he christens Frog (Sally Field), and in doing so runs afoul of Texas Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), the father of Frog’s betrothed.

OK, so Smokey and the Bandit will never be mistaken for great art- as far as onscreen cross-country drives go, it’s no Two Lane Blacktop. But in the intervening three decades, the movie has lost almost none of its charm. Much of the film feels like a live-action Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam cartoon, with Bandit smooth-talking his way out of scrapes while the rootin’ tootin’ Sheriff Justice fulminates about his ever-slippery quarry. However, the film is made with real style and wit, and even if the film hits every note we expect it to- there’s even a short romantic interlude where Bandit and Frog take time out from the drive to do a little offscreen he-in’ and she-in’- it’s pretty darn irresistible.

The key to the film rests in the performances, which for the genre are first-rate. At the center of the film is Reynolds, who gives the best star turn of his career. It’s tempting to say that Reynolds was only playing himself, but to do so would be to underestimate the comic verve and star presence he brought to the film. Whether he’s trying quips over the squawk box with Snowman or pissing off Justice, Reynolds makes it all look easy.

For her part, Field makes a funny and surprisingly romantic counterpart for Reynolds- a talky, insecure, very seventies leading lady who’s a far cry from the damsels in distress and one-dimensional sex symbols that populate most movies of this sort. In addition, she and Reynolds have a palpable chemistry (which later translated into an offscreen romance between the two), and it’s this comfort level between the two that really sells their scenes together, most of which consist primarily of two people talking in a car. And Jackie Gleason remains, as ever, a treasure, giving a blustery performance that’s as agreeably salty as a bag of pretzels. Sheriff Justice may be a sumbitch with a badge, but darn if Gleason doesn’t make the guy lovable.

Like its star, Smokey and the Bandit is an unassuming movie with no ambitions except to show audiences a good time. It’s what you might call cinematic comfort food- there’s nothing new or bold about it, but it’s highly satisfying all the same. Thirty years down the line, Smokey also evokes a bygone era in movies, both in terms of its pre-CGI car chases (courtesy of stunt driver turned director Needham) and its pre-irony iconography. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a big-screen hero sporting a cowboy hat without so much as a wink to the audience, but it’s a testament to the enduring appeal of the film, and of Burt Reynolds’ performance, that Bandit can still pull it off with ease. And of course, that Trans Am is as awesome today as it ever was.

Not That Anyone Cares Now, but Rudy Giuliani Was the Tazmanian Devil

Phil Nugent — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Jeff Greenfield at Slate offers a timely new unified theory of American presidential politics based on the work of Chuck Jones. In a nutshell: American politicians are divided between those who remind voters of Bugs Bunny and those who remind them of Daffy Duck. "As shaped by genius animator Chuck Jones — he didn't create the Warner Bros. icons, but he gave them their later looks and personalities — Bugs and Daffy represent polar opposites in how to deal with the world. Bugs is at ease, laid back, secure, confident. His lidded eyes and sly smile suggest a sense that he knows the way things work. He's onto the cons of his adversaries... Bugs never raises his voice, never flails at his opponents or at the world. He is rarely an aggressor." JFK was a Bugs, Nixon a Daffy; Ronald Reagan, a Bugs, Jimmy Carter a Daffy (who, as if in some Biblical prophecy, prepared for the 1980 contest by being attacked by a rabbit.) Some partisans may detect cracks in the argument. Greenfield identifies the current incumbent as a "Bugs Bunny", but do either Al Gore or John Kerry match up with Daffy Duck, as described by Greenfield: "He fumes, he clenches his fists, his eyes bulge, and his entire body tenses with fury," responding to every setback with "a sibilant sneer"? (Personally, I always associated Kerry with Bullwinkle. But maybe dragging in characters from Jay Ward Productions would demand a whole other set of rules.) And while there may be something to the idea that George W. Bush seems more "at ease, laid back, secure, confident" than his adversaries, it will come as some news to the United Nations that "he never flails at his opponents or at the world" — and perhaps a bit of a belated shocker to everyone else that "he knows the way things work." (Me, I'd say that Bush was more like that manic little dog who used to follow Spike the bullddog around, looking like he was about to piss himself, babbling non-stop about how they were gonna find some cats and put the smackdown on them. Spike, of course, was Dick Cheney.)

In Greenfield's analysis — and he must be right, he does this for a living — Hillary Clinton is a Daffy, Barack Obama a Bugs. "When Clinton insisted that Obama not simply 'denounce' Louis Farrakhan but 'reject him,' Obama shrugged. Well, he said, I don't really see any difference, but if you think there is, I reject and denounce. Indeed, throughout the debate, Obama leaned back and asked for time with the flick of a finger, as if summoning a waiter for another bottle of wine. Clinton, meanwhile, leaned forward, pushing her points with grim determination." So that should give Obama an edge in the general election when he faces John McCain, who is as Daffy as they come. But if Clinton should prevail, then come November, we will have the awesome, perhaps scary spectacle of two Daffys locked in a winner-take-all battle for supremacy. Worlds will collide in a way that Chuck Jones never dared to imagine.