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Screengrab Presents: THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As faithful readers already know by now, the End Is Near for this blog...but before we all get Raptured up outta this bitch, your soon-to-be-less-employed-than-usual pals here at the Screengrab figured we’d settle the age-old question of ultimate movie quality once and for all with our own definitive and irrefutable rulings on the subject.

Last week, we determined the Top Ten Worst Atrocities in the History of Cinema...and now, after months of intensive research, legal wrangling, animal testing, sleepless nights and enough partisan debate to make the Coleman-Franken dispute seem like a mere coin-toss, we hereby present our individual and collective picks for THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

(And...okay, so we cheated a little, kicking things off with an insoluble three-way tie for the #10 spot, starting with...)

10. DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)

Terrence Malick’s sophomore effort about a love triangle that develops in the 1920 Texas panhandle is a work of pure cinema in which everything about its story, its characters, and its larger concerns is conveyed through overwhelmingly evocative imagery. From piercing cutaways to the natural world, to Linda Manz’s strange, haunting narration, to peerlessly beautiful twilight hour cinematography and Ennio Morricone’s wrenching score, it’s a film whose mournful poeticism casts a lingering spell, and which stands – in this critic’s humble opinion – as the finest feature ever committed to celluloid. (NS)

10. BELLE DE JOUR (1967)

Earlier this year, I sat down and watched Buñuel’s masterpiece Belle de Jour for what must have been the fortieth or so time, and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this story is all a fantasy in the mind of the main character’s husband. If you’ve seen the movie, think about it -- the story is about the virginal Severine (Catherine Deneuve), who plays the elegant wife for husband Jean (Jean Sorel), while harboring (and eventually giving in to) fantasies of debasing herself as a prostitute. Observe the way Jean is always on the sidelines of the story, until the final reel, when he gets dragged into the middle of it. And look at his knowing smirk in the final scene. Now, I have no idea if this reading was something Buñuel intended. But no matter -- Belle de Jour is the kind of movie that invites readings like this one, however strange and far-fetched they might be. Also, it’s got Deneuve at the apex of her icy-hot sex appeal, Michel Piccoli at his most insinuating, plus it actually gets funnier with each subsequent viewing. From an objective point of view, Belle de Jour may not be the best movie ever made, but nuts to that -- it’s my favorite, and that’s good enough for me. (PC)

10. STAR WARS (1977)

During my tenure here at the Screengrab, I’ve rhapsodized endlessly and embarrassingly about my love for the original Star Wars, and now, as Grand Moff Tarkin would say, it will be the last time. But why is it one of the best movies ever? Because, personally, no other film has ever transported me as far and completely from the grip of dull reality into the escapist realms of cinematic possibility. Because, in a general sense, it distilled decades (even centuries) of recycled pop culture into something nobody had ever quite seen before. And while many blame George Lucas (and his buddy Steven Spielberg) for spawning the sort of CGI-infused, ADD-inducing summer blockbusters that led to the Michael Bayification of Hollywood, it should be remembered that Lucas’ original space opera was powered as much by crackerjack storytelling, likeable characters and a sincere joie de vivre as it was by special effects...a lesson clearly absorbed by the best of the new generation of blockbuster auteurs like Jon “Iron Man” Favreau and J.J. “Star Trek” Abrams. (And, finally, one last Star Wars fun fact, for old time’s sake: while double-checking the Internet Movie Database to see if I got the above Tarkin quote right, I unexpectedly discovered that the deformed guy who gives Luke Skywalker a hard time in the Mos Eisley cantina (“He doesn’t like you...I don’t like you either”) is apparently a doctor -- Dr. Cornelius Evazan, to be exact -- though I’m guessing the doctorate was more of an honorary degree, possibly bestowed by Arizona State University). (AO)

9. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

"A simple story about bad men in changing times" is how Sam Peckinpah summed it up. But it's so much more than that. Pauline Kael said it was "a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya's" and also that "pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle." Westerns had always been mythic stories, morality tales about good and bad without the guiding force of law to keep matters civilized. The Wild Bunch brought a sense of grim reality to the story without losing the mythic quality. Gunfighters weren't good guys living by a code and bad guys living for themselves. Gunfighters didn't color-code into white and black hats. All of them - crooks, thieves, and highwaymen - were amoral, self-serving murderers. If they had a code of honor, it was a situational code, painting themselves in the best light. In the opening scene, the Wild Bunch weren't above using innocent civilians as a smokescreen when making their escape, nor were the railroad's hired guns above shooting through the civilians to get the Bunch. Peckinpah wanted his audience to feel the blood and iron, and he hoped that people would find themselves excited by the bloodlust and marvel at their own excitement and what it says about people. However, he stuck to a relativistic morality throughout the movie: the Bunch were merciless killers, but the railroad's hired guns were scummy desert rats unworthy of the Bunch. The Bunch robbed trains and put guns into the hands of the Mexican warlord Mapache, but their robbery was silent, clever, and cool, and they despised Mapache's base brutality. Considering the alternatives, they were the white hats, and moreover, they sort of knew it. All the arguments between the Bunch's leader Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his lieutenant Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) were about what it meant to be honorable, what it meant to take a stand against the greater evil. Time is weighing their arguments down. The 20th century is upon them, and they're barely out of the 18th. They're getting older, slower, and there's no retirement plan for gunfighters. Pike talks about making one last score and then backing off, but Dutch brings him back to reality: "Back off to what?" That's a great question, and there is no answer for it. (HC)

8. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Even fifty years ago, it seems Hollywood's best days were already behind it. Los Angeles is a city that has been haunted by its past for nearly the entire length of its existence, and Sunset Boulevard is still its quintessential ghost story. Half a century later, Billy Wilder's masterpiece remains the eeriest and most caustic evocation of the Golden Age's twilight ever captured on celluloid. Wilder is often dismissed as a "writer's director" (or worse). It's true that his visual style is a fairly elemental one, but if Wilder's images don't possess the verve of a Kubrick or an Orson Welles, they do exert a cumulative power: William Holden’s cynical screenwriter shot from underneath as he floats lifelessly in the pool, flashbulbs popping behind him; the same pool seen empty and disintegrating from his garage apartment window, and the decaying tennis court beyond it; faded star Norma Desmond rising into the dust illuminated by a projector casting shadows of her former self on the wall; her legendary approach to the camera at the end, as she proclaims herself ready for her close-up. The air of rot and dissolution is almost unbearable. It's difficult to imagine now how shattering Sunset Boulevard must have been back in 1950. Tinseltown has been skewered many times since, in movies as different as Robert Altman's brilliant The Player and Joe Eszterhas's wretched Burn Hollywood Burn. Yet in all this time, no film-about-film has ever approached the dark, glittering genius of Wilder's vision. Even as the movie industry grows more and more appalling, Sunset Boulevard just gets better and better. (SVD)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak

DVD Digest for March 24, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week brings plenty of good news for both 007 fans and lovers of classic Hollywood, and plenty of other goodies besides.

This week’s DVD of the Week is Criterion’s much-awaited release of Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro. In this 1980 film, Truffaut for the first time addressed explicitly the subject of the French Occupation during World War II, seen here through the prism of a struggling theatre whose Jewish owner is hiding in the basement, leaving his leading-lady wife (played by Catherine Deneuve) to run the day-to-day business. There’s a great deal of intrigue in the film, not only involving a cocky young actor played by Gerard Depardieu, but with any number of Nazi sympathizers, informers, double-crossers, and sneaky Occupation types. But what comes through most clearly on this DVD release (and even more so on the Blu-Ray version) is how gorgeous the film is- how handsomely Truffaut re-created the period without letting the aesthetic concerns overwhelm the narrative ones. Likewise, this may be the most gorgeous Catherine Deneuve was on film- no mean feat, that.

The week’s other major classics release is the third volume of Warner’s Forbidden Hollywood Collection, this one featuring six films from director William Wellman- Other Men’s Women, The Purchase Price, Frisco Jenny, Midnight Mary, Heroes for Sale, and Wild Boys of the Road. Other classics releases this week include: Lemmon and Matthau (but not Randall and Klugman) The Odd Couple Centennial Edition (Paramount); Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief Centennial Edition (Paramount); Lilo & Stitch 2-Disc Big Wave Edition (Disney); the unofficial 007 adventure Never Say Never Again Collector’s Edition (Fox/MGM); and the Fast and the Furious trilogy (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with standard DVDs of the films available separately.

The recent releases for this week are highlighted by: Daniel Craig’s second James Bond opus, Quantum of Solace (Fox/MGM, also Blu-Ray); the animated adjunct to the Watchmen universe, Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter (Warner, also Blu-Ray); John Travolta as a talking dog in Bolt (Disney); and Anne Hathaway in Passengers (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings: The Venture Bros. Season 3 (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Star Wars: The Clone Wars- A Galaxy Divided (Warner); The Riches Season 2 (Fox); The Life and Times of Tim (Warner); and Big Stan (HBO, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s biggest Blu-Ray only release is James Bond Blu-Ray vol. 3 (Fox/MGM), which includes Goldfinger, Moonraker, and The World Is Not Enough, also available separately. If you’re still looking for more action, you can always pick up The Matrix (Warner). And on the more dramatic side of things, this week finds Paramount release three of its artier films of recent years, A Mighty Heart, The Kite Runner, and Things We Lost in the Fire. I admit I would be more enthusiastic about these releases if they were films I actually liked, but I do like the idea that studios are actually attempting to spotlight more than just loud action movies on Blu-Ray. Hey, it’s a start.

Finally, I leave you with the Synopsis of the Week, this week courtesy of the FUNimation Entertainment release Fruits Basket Box Set. Here it is:

“The Sohma family is cursed; however, this is no ordinary family curse. When a member of the family is embraced by a person of the opposite gender, they transform into an animal of the Chinese Zodiac! The Sohmas have managed to keep the curse private for generations, but when a young girl stumbles upon their secret, life in the Sohma household changes forever. Conflict erupts as zodiac rivals clash in this most unusual household. Young Tohru Honda must promise the secret will remain her own - or face the consequences!”

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

The Best:

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

An expansive entertainer with a midnight movie background trying to break into the grown-up big-studio world, Sam Raimi was a good boy while directing the first Spider-Man movie; he delivered the origin-story installment of the franchise with as much imagination and style as it could handle, all while maintaining the clear, easy-to-read line of a man trying to get a job done. The sequel gave him more of a chance to cut loose, and good man that he is, he availed himself of it. Tobey Maguire remains a perfect Peter Parker, but the real surprise here is Alfred Molina, who, assigned the role of one of the most repulsive supervillains in the union, renders him scary, understandable, and weirdly likable in about equal measure, a fit character for a tragic opera if tragic operas had chain saws in them. It remains the most successful movie not just in this particular franchise but in the brief history of Marvel Comics movies, and it deserves to be.

PERSEPOLIS (2007)

Marjane Satrapi’s alternately charming and harrowing memoir of growing up in Iran after the fundamentalist revolution may have seemed like an odd choice for a successful movie adaptation. But it’s really not that hard to figure out: her simple, descriptive lines and curves proved to be perfect for animation. Persepolis also showed the wisdom of allowing the original author of a comic to take the helm of a film adaptation; Satrapi proved to have excellent instincts as a screenwriter, and as an animator, she knew just when to keep it simple and when to make it more elegant and elaborate. It’s a beautiful-looking movie, considering how little it cost and how simple it comes across on screen. But the story at the heart of it all is what sustains Persepolis; despite its setting at such a grim and tumultuous time, it’s still very much the story of a little girl who grows too quickly into a young woman, with all the pains and pleasures that could happen to such a woman anywhere in the world. Satrapi leavens the story (acted with top-shelf casts in both the English and French versions) with humor and historical perspective, and she nicely embraces sentimentality when remembering her family while refusing it for herself. It must have been quite difficult to pull off all these complex balances in such a short running time, but Satrapi and her collaborator Vincent Parronaud accomplish the feat nicely.

The Worst:

THE PUNISHER (2004)

Movies and comics have long had an incestuous history -- the original Batman comics drew on memories of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Cat and the Canary, and Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs just for its basic character designs -- but few major comics characters have so clearly been the result of the comics companies trying to keep pace with changing standards in movie heroes as the Punisher. First appearing in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man in 1974 -- a time when action stars such as Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood were redefining the American tough guy as a remorseless vigilante and blood murderer -- the Punisher doesn't have super powers. Instead, he has an arsenal of weapons, a black muscle shirt with a skull logo on it, and a chip on his shoulder. He's a killer -- which at the time of his debut set him apart from traditional superheroes -- but he only kills gangsters, which is supposed to complicate things. Even so, the powers that be were uncomfortable enough with him that they could never quite make up their minds whether he was supposed to be an edgy good guy or a conflicted villain. (His mere presence on the cover of a comic book guaranteed monster sales, though, so he was assured of many, many opportunities to return and make the bosses uneasy. Even so, it would be a dozen years before the company swallowed deep and gave him his own series.) Starting with the first, direct-to-video version in 1989, starring Dolph Lundgren sans skull T-shirt, there have been three attempts at a Punisher movie, with three different actors playing the Punisher, and they all just look like grade-B killing-machine flicks. As for which of them is the worst, well, there's really not a lot to choose from, but I'm giving the second one, starring Thomas Jane, the nod over the first one and last year's Punisher: War Zone, starring Ray Stevenson (of the HBO series Rome), if only because it probably got seen by the most (unlucky) people and wasted the time of some talented actors. That last category is not one that the colorless lug Thomas Jane belongs in, but even after all these thousands upon thousands of hours spent watching rotten movies and rottener comic books, we're still human enough to blanch at the sight of the late Roy Scheider getting a paycheck for being gunned down at a family picnic or a flailing John Travolta being dragged by a bumper through an exploding car lot.

SUPERMAN III (1983)

This was the third and last of the Superman films produced by the father-and-son team of Ilya and Alexander Salkind; after it was released, the Salkinds unloaded the franchise onto the notorious team of Golan and Globus, which produced a cut-rate entry, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, having obtained Christopher Reeve's continued participation by agreeing to shape the script around a timely anti-nuclear weapons message. That movie is, conceivably, even worse than this one, but at least it's an underfunded, half-assed Superman movie. This is an overblown, ill-conceived Richard Pryor movie with Superman along for the ride. Or maybe it's a Superman movie that was hopelessly twisted out of shape by the effort to shoehorn Pryor into it after he'd agree to do it. (Pryor was just coming off a year where he was listed as the number one box office attraction in America; if he'd agreed to it, he'd have been shoehorned into The French Lieutenant's Woman.) The filmmakers never did figure out how to use Pryor; they might have worried that audiences wouldn't want him to be the bad guy, so they cast him as an employee of the bad guy (Robert Vaughan), and never fully made the leap to having him switch sides and become Superman's friend. Other plot developments and details, such as having Superman turn bad after exposure to near-beer Kryptonite (requiring an intervention by the spirit of Clark Kent), and the jazz singer Annie Ross' role as Vaughan's sister, suggest that the Salkinds tried to economize by hiring the writing staff one morning, firing them at the end of the day, and assembling the script from notes that they'd scribbled down on their lunch wrappers.

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

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

The Screengrab Holiday Special: Movies We’re Thankful For (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:30:00 GMT

PAUL CLARK IS THANKFUL FOR:

BETTY BLUE (1986)

It would be a mistake for me to trace the birth of my love for movies to one film, and if I was foolish enough to do so, a better candidate would be something like Pulp Fiction. But while Tarantino pushed me down the road of cinephilia, I was still a sheltered suburban high schooler for whom subtitled movies were still, well, foreign. So I suppose it makes sense that my first experience with French cinema was motivated by the same factor that has led generations of curious moviegoers to the arthouses and dusty “foreign” shelves at the video store: sex. “Check this one out,” said the pierced twentysomething guy behind the counter to me and my pack of renting buds. “It’s French -- you know what that means.” And in the course of the evening, if anyone didn’t know what that meant, they would soon be educated. It wasn’t just the subtitles or the sexuality though -- Betty Blue introduced me to the sort of woman I’d never seen before in a movie. As played by Beatrice Dalle, Betty was a stark contrast to the teenage girls who mostly snubbed me throughout my high school years -- she was a feral life force, fiercely carnal, both sexy and more than a little scary. But even more than that, Betty Blue was the gateway drug that got me hooked on French cinema, leading me to Truffaut, Renoir, Godard, and all my auteurial pals. Not bad for a movie I watched primarily to see some tits.

BELLE DU JOUR (1967)

Every movie lover has that one movie that speaks to him in ways that defy explanation, and that causes him to cling to it and defend it like a lioness defends her cubs. For me, it’s Luis Bunuel’s late-period masterpiece. Why, you ask? Part of it is no doubt the eternal allure of Catherine Deneuve -- still my favorite actress and movie star -- in the role that practically defined her on- and offscreen persona from that point forward. But Deneuve aside, there’s the film itself, an enigmatic puzzle-box of dreams, fantasies and fetishes that refuses to let itself be pinned down. I must have watched Belle de Jour at least fifty times over the years, and each time something new pops out at me. For one thing, it gets a whole lot funnier the more you watch it, especially the scenes involving Deneuve and the ever-lecherous Michel Piccoli. But most of all, I guess I love how slippery the character of Severine is -- unlike most filmmakers, who boil down their characters to a handful of defining events and motivations, it’s never quite clear what drives Severine, and the extensive flashbacks and fantasy sequences bait us with the possibility of an answer before pushing us away again, confounding us. In the end, it’s nothing but a tease, but as any successful tease can tell you, that’s what keeps ‘em coming back for more.

THE SCARECROW (1920)

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If I have a favorite filmmaker, it’s Buster Keaton, whose films have brought me more pure pleasure than any other director’s. Of course, his features are magnificent -- especially The General, Sherlock Jr. and Seven Chances -- and the feature form allowed him to sustain his filmmaking brilliance in a way that has set an impossibly high bar for future generations (so far, only Tati has managed to vault it, though Jerry Lewis came close once or twice). However, for pure laughs, give me his short films any day. The lunacy of One Week and the athleticism of Neighbors have their defenders, but for me, it doesn’t get any better than The Scarecrow, which begins with an uproarious scene in a house filled with sight gags and just gets more blissfully inspired from there, wrapping up in a scant twenty minutes. There’s a reason why The Scarecrow has become my most dependable cinematic cure-all -- for me, no other movie can turn around a crappy day faster or more reliably than this one. But don’t take my word for it -- thanks to the magic of YouTube, the entire short can be viewed above.

THE FILMS OF DON HERTZFELDT

It was back in 2005 that I had my first Don Hertzfeldt experience. I headed to the local theatre to watch the first installment of The Animation Show, and sometime during the Hertzfeldt-directed introductory short -- probably around the “Egg!” “Egg!” “Flower!” “Egg!” bit -- it hit me like a slap in the face. “This guy is a stone cold genius,” I thought. And nothing I’ve seen since has dissuaded me from that opinion. Naturally, I love his early work -- the twisted angst of Ah, L’Amour, the tentative dating saga Lily and Jim, the gloriously sick joke of Billy’s Balloon. But Hertzfeldt, to his credit, has never rested on his laurels. Rejected is a blast to be sure -- nominating it for Best Animated Short has to be one of the coolest things the Academy has ever done -- but the incendiary chaos of its final minutes pointed the way to the more experimental films that were to come. And Hertzfeldt hasn’t looked back, first tackling The Meaning of Life, then turning inward with the profound, Raymond Carver-esque Everything Will Be OK. After seeing the latter film, I wrote, “against all odds, Hertzfeldt just gets deeper and better with every film. I'm almost afraid of his next movie.” I only hope that his latest, I Am So Proud of You, makes it to Columbus sooner rather than later to scare the proverbial pants off me.

THE COLUMBUS MOVIEGOING SCENE

For most Columbus residents, Ohio State football casts a long shadow over the local scene. Yet growing up in the suburbs has made me better-equipped to appreciate the city’s more cultured side. For one thing, where I grew up I had to drive for over an hour to attend a movie theatre that played subtitled films. So I’m thankful that I have several in town now, presenting me with a number of tantalizing cinematic possibilities. All right, so maybe we don’t get the artsy stuff until weeks or even months after it opens in New York City. And fine, our local arthouse situation has become somewhat tenuous of late (here’s hoping that the Grandview Theatre can re-emerge better than ever next spring). But by gum, there’s still a lot to love about going to movies in Columbus. There’s the Horror and Sci-Fi Marathons which I’ve written about on innumerable occasions, giving geeks from miles around a chance to converge on Cowtown twice a year. But most of all, there’s the Wexner Center, an invaluable resource to the artistically-minded moviegoer. Not only can I catch up on the latest works from the masters of world cinema, but the Wex also plays plenty of classics, both in its theatre (equipped with the city’s only working 70mm projector) and occasionally in the galleries, where I’ve recently been haunting the Warhol exhibition. I’m still waiting for the day when Columbus takes its rightful place as the Austin of the North, but until that happens, what we’ve got now will do quite nicely, thank you very much.

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

Contributor: Paul Clark

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

10. ISABELLA ROSSELLINI (1952 - )

Rossellini made her movie debut in 1976, playing a nun in Vincente Minnelli's A Matter of Time, which starred her mother, Ingrid Bergman -- but that was basically just a family outing. Her movie career didn't really take root until after her mother's death, when she appeared in 1985's White Nights. The next year, equipped with a tacky wig, a tackier apartment, and a kitchen knife, she achieved neo-noir immortality as Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet. She and Lynch became a couple, acting together in Zelly and Me and collaborating on his Wild at Heart. Around the time that picture hit theaters, he reportedly broke up with her over the phone, inspiring millions of film geeks across the globe to murmur in unison, "Jesus Christ, maybe he is nuts!" More recently, she has formed a productive working partnership with Canadian auteur Guy Maddin, who directed her in his feature The Saddest Music in the World and also in the short film My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a tribute to her father, Roberto Rossellini, which she wrote. (She also seized the opportunity to cast herself as Alfred Hitchcock, David Selznick, and Charlie Chaplin.) More recently, she wrote, directed and starred in the "Green Porno" short film series.

9. CATHERINE DENEUVE (1943 - )

With her cool elegance and breathtaking beauty, it would have been all too easy for Catherine Deneuve to become yet another in a long line of Euro-babes who were emerging during the 1950s and 1960s. That she dated notorious starlet-“groomer” Roger Vadim for a time would seem to indicate this. Yet from the early stages of her career, it was clear that Deneuve was in it for the long haul. For most rising performers, starring in a film by a relative neophyte in which every line of dialogue was not merely sung but dubbed by a professional singer would have seemed risky. But Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg became a sensation largely on the basis of Deneuve’s charisma, and she quickly became an international star. But rather than simply playing girlish characters again and again in a series of Umbrellas clones, Deneuve began seeking out roles that tweaked this archetype, notably as the tightly wound virgin of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and the bourgeois wife with the vivid fantasy life in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. In the decades that followed, Deneuve became an icon in France -- literally, having served as the face of the French national symbol “Marianne” during the 1980s. Hollywood came calling on several occasions throughout her career, and Deneuve answered, most memorably as the 200-year-old bisexual vampire in The Hunger. But more often, Deneuve has leveraged her stardom -- and her still-formidable beauty -- to work with directors of international renown. In addition to Demy, Polanski, and Buñuel, Deneuve’s roll-call of world-class collaborators has also included François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Melville, Andre Téchiné, Robert Aldrich, Raul Ruiz, Agnès Varda, Manoel de Oliveira, Léos Carax, and Arnaud Desplechin. Heck, she even petitioned to play a punch-press operator in Dancer in the Dark just to work with Lars Von Trier. Perhaps most happily for her fans, François Ozon’s 8 Women finally allowed Deneuve to unveil the singing voice that Jacques Demy had dubbed over decades before- which, as it turned out, was just fine after all.

8. MARILYN MONROE (1926-1962)

There are a lot of bad things you can say about Marilyn Monroe. A depressive, self-pitying pillhead, she had the biggest career anyone could ever hope for, and she threw it away; she was too ambitious, she fell in love too easily (and always with the wrong men), she was talented enough to go just so far and no farther. She never realized her potential (or never had any real potential to begin with); she helped to introduce a poisonous dumb-blonde stereotype for actresses – and, for that matter, for women – that persists to this day; and, if you believe some people (including, reportedly, Richard Nixon), she’s one of the reasons John F. Kennedy died. That’s pretty bad stuff. So what can you say in her defense? How about this: she was the biggest movie star of all time, and she will be for the rest of time. She was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived, and if the platinum-tressed knockout look has gotten out of control since her heyday, she had the pleasure of inventing it. She took a limited acting range and worked it to razor-sharpness, and if she never stepped out of a very specific spectrum of characters, she played each and every one of them to the hilt, and what’s more, she seemed to have a great time doing it. She was so universally beloved that every man wanted her and every woman wanted to be her, and she was the most mourned figure in America until JFK bought a bullet a year later. She is – more than James Dean, more than Humphrey Bogart, maybe even more than the Hollywood sign – a visual symbol of the movie business. She’s an icon’s icon, rivaled in our entire culture by only Elvis Presley. That’s what you can say about Marilyn Monroe.

7. BETTE DAVIS (1908-1989)

If you can judge even a superstar by the company they keep, how are we to judge Bette Davis? It’s beyond question that she’s one of the biggest stars who ever lived, but what kind of star was she? The name she’s most often linked with, by both fate (their most productive periods coincided) and judgment (they ran neck and neck for Oscar nominations much of their careers), is Katharine Hepburn. But Hepburn always seemed to be in Hollywood, but never of it: you could easily get the idea she was just a well-meaning, patrician East Coast gal who happened to be really good at acting in movies. Davis, on the other hand, was a self-constructed creature of Hollywood who was nearly as influential off screen as she was on. A ruthless manager of her own career, she forced more than one studio into court when she felt she was being mishandled by the system, and so influential was she in backstage wrangling that she became known as “the fourth Warner Brother”. Of course, her other famous nickname was “Mother Goddamn”; her only rival in sheer ballsy spite, and the only person who could assess an enemy and go right for their jugular, was Joan Crawford. With their cut-throat business acumen, their penetrating eyes, their disastrous personal lives, and their ability to exploit a studio system built to exploit them, Crawford would be the real actress Davis most resembled if it weren’t for one thing: Davis was ten times the actress Crawford was. With her dramatic intensity, her cynical humor, and her ease in any kind of genre, Bette Davis wasn’t just a superstar, she was also a legitimately great actress – and that’s why she’s on this list.

6. MERYL STREEP (1949 - )

If there is one thing that can be considered a transcendental aspect of Meryl Streep’s career, it is that she proved that you don’t have to be inhumanly attractive to become an actress of superstar caliber. (Obligatorily, we will mention that it also says a lot about Hollywood that Ms. Streep – who, in fact, has always been a perfectly lovely-looking woman – is not considered particularly attractive by its standards.) Simultaneously, if there is one thing that can be considered an abject failure about Meryl Streep’s career, it is that it set no particular precedent; since her stunning early work in movies like Sophie’s Choice and Silkwood to her amazing latter-day roles in Adaptation and The Hours, she has been widely feted as the greatest actress alive, while elsewhere, starring roles keep on going to the sort of women who look like she doesn’t. Pity poor Streep: she’ll have to go to her grave content to be merely the most spellbinding actress of the last half-century, with nothing but an unprecedented 14 Oscar nominations to show for it. If it were anyone else getting that many nods for Academy gold, you’d have to suspect the fix was in – no one can be that good. But Meryl Streep is, astonishingly, that good. At times, in fact, she seems to be some sort of highly sophisticated android that has been programmed by omniscient aliens to be good at acting: every one of her fourteen nominations was well-earned, and you could make a solid argument she should have won at least half a dozen more than the two she owns. She has no particular schtick, tic, or gimmick; she’s seemingly not drawn to a particular type of role, nor does she seek out scripts that play to one strength or another. Instead, she acts the way Michael Jordan plays basketball: whatever is required of her in the moment, she finds some unexpected yet utterly effective way of doing it, and there is no way to stop her.

Click Here for Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

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

Screengrab Fall Preview: Paul Clark's Picks

Paul Clark — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Yesterday, my colleague Scott Von Doviak dared all of his fellow Screengrab staffers to weigh in on our most anticipated movies of the fall. Given my lifelong inability to resist a dare (which resulted in my eating far too many unspeakable things in my younger days) I’ve decided to answer the call. Craving an additional challenge- and hoping to spotlight the wide array of good and bad releases coming soon to a theatre near me- I’ve decided to eliminate all contenders that appeared in Scott’s preview. Here goes:

3 UP

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – for years, David Fincher has been one of Hollywood’s most gifted filmmakers, with last year’s Zodiac his best film yet. With Button, Fincher turns his camera on an honest-to-goodness work of literature (an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, fer chrissakes), but don’t expect a workmanlike Tradition of Quality-style adaptation. Button re-teams Fincher with Brad Pitt, who continues to improve as an actor by seeking out adventurous material, and this story gives him his biggest challenge yet, not only playing a character from childhood through old age, but playing him while aging in reverse. It’s the kind of story that requires a visionary to pull off, and I can think of few better candidates for the job than Fincher. Every year, there’s at least one high-profile movie that I actively root for to be great, and this year, it’s Benjamin Button.

2. A Christmas Tale – Unlike Benjamin Button, the latest film by the great French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin is something of a known quantity, premiering at Cannes to almost universal acclaim. But even if it hadn’t already screened, my hopes for this one would be through the roof. In the past few years, Desplechin has become one of my favorite filmmakers, and he’s coming off his finest work yet, 2004’s Kings and Queen. Factor in that Christmas Tale re-unites four of that film’s stars- Matthieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Devos, and Hippolyte Girardot- and I’m sold. That the film’s IMDb recommends the Steve Martin remake of Cheaper By the Dozen shouldn’t be held against it.

3. The Brothers Bloom – as I stated in my Trailer Review earlier this week, I’m in the pro-Brick camp, so naturally I’m excited for Rian Johnson’s follow-up project. But he’s also assembled an irresistible cast (I love Brody and Ruffalo as brothers, and Rachel Weisz is always best when she plays daffy), so I’m extra-stoked for this one. Could we be witnessing the rise of a major American filmmaker? Here’s hoping.

3 DOWN

1. Defiance – tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Ed Zwick directs a film about an outsider who aids a group of minorities in fighting about those who oppress them. That the minorities are Jews and the time period is during World War II only makes Defiance’s Oscar-grubbing even more blatant. Thanks, but no thanks.

2. RockNRolla – you know, I was under the impression that the abject failure of Revolver coupled with the divorce from Madonna meant that the moviegoing public would get a break from Guy Ritchie. Alas, that beautiful dream wasn’t to be. It was nice while it lasted though…

3. Bedtime Stories – Adam Sandler’s comic persona might be juvenile, but he’s always been at his best at unleashing his rage onscreen in decidedly un-kid-friendly ways. Less successful are his attempts to warm the heart, which makes the idea of a Sandler family comedy all the more misguided. The presence of Adam (The Pacifier) Shankman in the director’s chair doesn’t inspire much confidence either.

WILD CARD

It’s not as odd as Scott’s choice of Oliver Stone’s W. (what could be?), but I’m pretty conflicted about Quantum of Solace. What made Casino Royale so damn good is that it combined a kickass James Bond thrill ride with a legitimately compelling story. But although hiring director Marc Forster hints that the producers might be trying for that same balance of action and drama, I have my doubts that lightning will strike twice. Add to this Forster’s lack of experience in the action genre, plus the fact that unlike Casino this one doesn’t have an Ian Fleming novel to provide a solid narrative foundation, and Quantum has a lot to live up to. Sure, it might be diverting, but after Casino Royale, that just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. However, I’d love nothing more than to be wrong about this.

DVD Digest for June 10, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The run-up to Father’s Day continues with more dad-friendly DVDs, including a handful of the most acclaimed films of 2008 to date.

DVD of the Week: After last week’s wide selection of testosterone-heavy actioners, this week finally brings a DVD for the thinking dad- HBO’s critically-feted seven-part miniseries John Adams. Based on the book by David McCullough and starring Oscar nominees Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, John Adams is a prestige project through and through. But the big surprise is how exhaustive and complex a portrait of the man and his time this really is. Some highly unpleasant events take place on the way to revolution, and the film doesn’t shy away from this reality. Likewise, in addition to Giamatti and Linney’s accomplished turns as John and Abigail, the film also boasts some note-perfect supporting work from the likes of David Morse as George Washington and Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin. As far as founding fathers go, Adams has long taken a backseat in popularity to these two men as well as Thomas Jefferson, but if nothing else, John Adams is invaluable in helping to pin down his importance in the history of this nation.

Other new releases this week include: Doug Liman’s Jumper (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in Meathead’s The Bucket List (Warner, also Blu-Ray); 2007’s Funny Games (Warner), the film so nice Michael Haneke made it twice; Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson in the historical bodice-ripper The Other Boleyn Girl (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days (IFC Films); the Exquisite Corpse-styled indie thriller The Signal (Magnolia); and of course, the best-reviewed theatrical release of 2008, Larry the Cable Guy in Witless Protection (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray).

In classics on DVD, this week’s big news is Lionsgate’s High Noon Two-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which brings the guy-movie favorite back to DVD with a number of new features. Included among these are a number of documentaries and featurettes, along with a video of Tex Ritter performing his Oscar-winning song from the film. But if dad’s tastes run more to looking at babelicious European actresses of yore, Lionsgate’s got that covered too, with the Catherine Deneuve 5-Film Collection (including Le Sauvage, Hôtel des Amériques, Manon 70, Le Choc and Fort Saganne) and the Sophia Loren 4-Film Collection (which includes I Girasoli, Carosello Napoletano, Attila, and Madame Sans-Gene).

Finally, being released this week exclusively in Blu-Ray: Broken Trail (Sony), Natural Born Killers (Warner), and The Professionals (Sony).

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 6: Deneuve, Davies, and the Dardennes

Paul Clark — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:06:00 GMT

Along with A Christmas Tale (which has already played) and Synechdoche, New York (which hasn’t), my most-anticipated title in competition at Cannes this year was the latest film from Belgian masters Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, The Silence of Lorna. Judging by the reviews so far, the film seems more galvanizing than their previous work. Let's join the debate, now in progress...

Taking the affirmative is Glenn Kenny, who writes: “Le Silence De Lorna… is their followup to the 2006 Palme d'Or winner L'Enfant, and while I doubt that the Cannes prize is gonna go to this film, I think it's every bit as nuanced, surprising, and deeply moving as that film… Lorna is an entirely accessible film, one that moviegoers who like a nice juicy tale ought not be scared of.”

On the other side of the argument is Andrew O’Hehir, who contends that “[Arta] Dobroshi gives a brave and affecting performance, but there's something mechanistic and even cruel about "Lorna's Silence," which is more like a thriller than any previous Dardenne film, and correspondingly a lot less plausible. Whatever moral points it's trying to make about the underside of European affluence are uncharacteristically murky.”

Stepping in for the rebuttal is the Independent’s Jonathan Romney, writing: “The sense of revelation may not be there as it was with Rosetta, however, and the jurors may well be looking for something bigger and more of a statement - and there’s no shortage of films like that in competition this year. But as a film that’s very much about the new Europe, and the street-level problems that rarely get covered in film, Lorna certainly commands attention.”

And what’s this? A negative review from Jeff Wells: “I was close to enraged by the actions of Arta Dobroshi's main character in La Silence de Lorna, which I saw this morning. Which means I felt strongly irked by the Dardenne brothers' screenplay. Which means, despite the feeling and focus that went into it, that I didn't care for the film. At all.”

Finally, leaving us on a positive note is Variety’s Justin Chang: “Few directors offer the patient viewer such consummate rewards as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, longtime documakers whose uncompromising, beautifully observed studies of Belgium's urban poor (including Palme d'Or winners "Rosetta" and "L'Enfant") reveal a peerless talent for conjuring drama out of the mundane and wresting emotion from determinedly unsentimental material.”

What does it say about me that this debate makes me all the more excited for the film?

Other films playing today out of competition:

The Hollywood Reporter’s Peter Brunette on Tony Manero- “Not for the faint of heart, or for those who like their protagonists all warm and cuddly, this second feature of Chilean director Pablo Larrain, despite its various forms of crudeness, is vital and strangely arresting. Even better, its political critique of the Pinochet dictatorship is indirect and subtle, and thus all the more welcome and fresh.”

Variety’s Alissa Simon on Je veux voir- “What becomes a legend most? Surely not being a figurehead in a self-consciously arty pseudo docu-cum-road movie. Still, Catherine Deneuve’s iconic presence lends some commercial appeal to "I Want to See”… An uneasy mix of scripted scenario, improvisation and surprising reality, pic professes to want to show destruction wrought during Lebanon's 2006 summer war through the French star's eyes, but seems more concerned with capturing her image as she's trundled about.”

Finally, the most universally acclaimed today was Terence Davies’ long-awaited return to filmmaking, Of Time and the City. Time Out’s Geoff Andrew: “Watching the film, you realise that Britain has no other filmmaker to match Davies in terms of his purely cinematic sensibility. Fine as our other far-from-inconsiderable big names are, it’s hard to imagine any of them creating sheer filmic poetry as may be found here. Davies’s juxtapositions of music and image, especially, are consistently audacious, original and exhilarating, whether the compositions reflect and reinforce each other or whether they make more complex by way of superbly sharp irony.”

And for good measure, Time’s Mary Corliss: “a dreamy documentary of Davies' home town of Liverpool. Shots of working-class Liverpudlians from the '30s, '40s and '50s doing the wash, or playing with school-friends, or preparing dinner, offer a fascinating, poignant glimpse of the rhythm of ordinary life — so precious because it is so rarely seen in documentaries.”

Shaping up to be a pretty darn good Cannes after all, wouldn’t you say?