The Screengrab : charlie sheen

DVD Digest for April 21, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

As the summer movie season approaches, the studios unleash their first wave of DVDs that tie in with the upcoming blockbusters. However, this week also sees the release of one of the most intriguing DVDs so far this year.

Heading this week’s slate of recent releases is Darren Aronofsky’s working-class sports saga The Wrestler (Fox, also Blu-Ray), featuring the towering performance of Oscar-nominated comeback kid Mickey Rourke, as well as the Best Picture nominee Frost/Nixon (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with its televised tête-à-tête between Michael Sheen’s celebrity reporter and Frank Langella’s Tricky Dick. Also this week: the Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the acclaimed documentary A Jihad for Love (First Run).

As far as I can see there’s only one major classics release this week, but it’s a doozy- Criterion’s Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé. Featuring nearly two dozen works from the famed French scientist/filmmaker, this box set also features an original score by Yo La Tengo that accompanies eight of the films, as well as extensive interview footage with Painlevé from the French TV series Jean Painlevé Through His Films. Much has been made in the past of Criterion’s ongoing efforts to release the canonical classics of world cinema in worthy DVD editions, but no less noble is their commitment to honoring more esoteric fare like this, which might not otherwise have gotten released on DVD. I only hope that enough people will pick up this DVD that Criterion will be encouraged to release more like it in the future.

In TV on DVD news, this week sees the release of Caprica (Universal), the prequel to the acclaimed Sci-Fi Network series Battlestar Galactica, and the pilot episode for an upcoming series of the same name.

This week’s most in-demand Blu-Ray only release is the X-Men Trilogy (Fox), which is hitting shelves in advance of the big-screen spinoff entry X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Each of the films is also available separately, if you’d prefer. A comic book movie of a somewhat different stripe is also arriving on Blu-Ray today- Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (Disney), which includes both theatrical and “extended” versions, along with plenty of special features. Other Blu-Ray only releases include Charlie Sheen in The Arrival (Lionsgate), and, just in time for Earth Day, the nature doc Arctic Tale (Disney).

Finally, our Synopsis of the Week- a feature which, by rights, ought to be re-titled Anime Synopsis of the Week- is actually a twofer this week, coming as it does from the ADV Films two-pack of Puni Puni Poemi and Kekko Kamen. Here’s the synopsis:

”Aliens annihilate Poemi Watanabe's parents in PUNI PUNI POEMI, so she goes on a revenge program that includes S&M, humongous robots, and the mysterious properties of dead fish. Poemi becomes a superhero in the process, but all she wanted was to be a professional voice actress!”

OK, I guess I get the ways S&M and humongous robots must be related to a plot like this, but the whole “dead fish” plot point sounds so bizarre that it’s one of those things that can only seems to turn up in Japanese animation. Also, I sure do hope that Poemi becomes the superhero voice actress she’s always dreamed of being! Moving on:

”In KEKKO KAMEN, a busty supervixen puts up a losing battle against stripping down to her bare essentials as a parade of creeps-- ranging from a principal to a camera-wielding samurai-- successfully remove her wardrobe.”

Compared to its companion in the DVD set, it doesn’t sound like this one has much of a plot. In fact, if not for the synopsis revealing that the creeps “successfully remove” the heroine’s wardrobe, there would be almost no story to speak of. I do, however, like that the protagonist is a “busty supervixen”, since as any Russ Meyer fan can tell you, that’s the best kind of supervixen.

Unwatchable #39: “The Invisible Maniac”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Our journey through unwatchability has so far encompassed the work of such legendary schlock directors as Ed Wood, Uwe Boll and Albert Pyun, but now it’s time to make the case for an underrated purveyor of cinematic swill, a filmmaker who may not be a first ballot Hall of Shamer, but whose body of work is beginning to attract some attention among cutting edge cine-sabermetricians. You may know this man as Rif Coogan, but his real name is Adam Rifkin.

If the name rings a bell, you may be thinking of The Dark Backward, a 1991 Judd Nelson vehicle that was specifically engineered to be a cult favorite midnight movie, a strategy that pretty much never works. Or perhaps you’re reminded of The Chase, in which Rifkin tapped into that hidden longing within us all to be stuck in a car for 90 minutes with Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson. Maybe you vaguely recall Detroit Rock City, the comedy about four teenagers trying to scam their way into a KISS concert, or Night at the Golden Eagle, described by IMDb commenter stewart0602 as “the kind of work that grabs your package and squeezes for 90 minutes,” or the Austin-shot Homo Erectus, which only saw release under the straight-to-DVD title National Lampoon’s Stoned Age.

For this installment of Unwatchable, we delve deep into the Rifkin catalogue, all the way back to 1990 for The Invisible Maniac. Even in this early work, the Rifkin sensibility is on full display: quirky characters, broad humor and, most importantly, boobies. Lots and lots of naked boobies, many of them quite impressive and pleasing to the boobie aficionado. The cast includes Shannon Wisely, who would go on to a long and successful career in erotica as Savannah before her death in 1994 (I’ll never forget her exquisite work in Dixie Dynamite and the All-Star Tit Queens), Melissa Moore (Sorority House Massacre II, Bikini Drive-In), Stephanie Blake (“Stripper” in Mambo Kings, “Stripper in Big T’s” in Whore and “Tattooed Topless Dancer” in Danger Zone II: Reaper’s Revenge) and Claudette Rains, which I’m going to guess is a little in-joke by Mr. Rifkin.

The Invisible Maniac himself is played by Noel Peters in his only leading role and practically his only role of any kind (apparently he’s also in a 1997 TV-movie of Cinderella). Peters plays physicist Dr. Kevin Dorwinkle, who reacts badly when his colleagues laugh at his proposed molecular discombobulator and kills them all. He later escapes the asylum for the criminally insane and poses as a high school physics teacher, a gig that provides him plenty of opportunities to ogle nubile babes. Even more opportunities present themselves once he perfects his formula and is able to render himself invisible.

Although Rifkin was no doubt inspired by the rich history of invisibility literature and film, I’d have to guess that the opening scene of Carrie served as his primary muse. He seems determined to absolutely exhaust the possibilities of the high school girl’s locker room and, more specifically, the showers within, which he envisions as an all-singing, all-dancing nonstop party of sudsy boobs and steam rising from glistening buttocks. Who among us would not want to harness the secret to invisibility given these circumstances? (I’m asking the straight fellas here, obviously. You ladies and gay dudes are welcome to visualize soapy ballsacks or whatever it is that turns you on.)

Anyway, copious boobage aside, The Invisible Maniac is a rather tedious slog, thanks in large part to Peters’ charmless lead performance. The supporting cast isn’t much better, but in fairness to them, Rifkin does handicap their efforts by forcing them to engage in all manner of amateur mime activity in order to simulate their struggles with the invisible maniac. “I’ve got my hands around his neck! Oh no, I’m punching him and missing! Ha ha, he’s tickling me!” This sort of thing. There is a bonus for sticking with the movie all the way to the end: two more boobies!

Previously on Unwatchable:
40. Son of the Mask
41. Troll 2
42. Zombie Nightmare
43. American Ninja V
44. Leonard Part 6

Red Suspension of Disbelief: Gordon Gekko's Speechwriter Would Like to Clarify

Phil Nugent — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Stanley Weiser, Oliver Stone's co-writer on the 1987 Wall Street, has just published his apologia for his part in the creation of the popular image of the morally shifty, massive-balled financial insider as American hero. (Weiser also wrote Stone's forthcoming W. as well as other politically crusading movies and TV films such as Murder in Mississippi, Freedom Song, Rudy: The Rudy Guiliani Story, and 1987's Project X, in which Matthew Broderick fearlessly rescued monkeys from The Man.) Wall Street, which starred Michael Douglas as maverick financier Gordon Gekko and Charlie Sheen, who had already done time as Stone's youthful fantasy alter ego in Platoon, as his corruptible protege. Douglas, playing a role designed to click with moviegoers' memories of the kind of charismatic heel role that his father had all but taken out a copyright on decades earlier, had his star heightened by the movie, for which he won an Academy Award. (As for Sheen, he can now be seen rotting before the viewer's very eyes on the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men. The other representatives of the show's title are played by Jon Cryer and some kid. I think somebody's math is off.) Meanwhile, Gekko's showboat moment, the "'Greed is good' speech", has become not just a one-scene highlight reel of Douglas's career but a signpost moment in 1980s culture, a phenomenon that's been challenging the 60's status as The Decade That Refused to Leave. (Oliver Stone, of course, has a foot solidly in both.) A recent critics' symposium on the possible effects of the Wall Street crash pointed to that speech as a choice example of satire that was adopted by people who steadfastly refused to get the joke.

With the current financial meltdown, Gekko's name has been coming up a lot lately, always with the understanding that to cite the character by name is to use a form of shorthand to conjure up images of predatory jackals in power suspenders. What isn't always apparent is that the people citing Wall Street as some kind of dire prophecy remember that the movie started out as stale news and then had the great good fortune to become an unplanned comment on breaking news, circa 1987. Stone had decided to do a movie about Wall Street around the time that the hammer started coming down on insider traders, including Ivan Boesky, who was arrested and started selling out his fellow street rats in 1986, the same year that he had delivered a "greed-is-good"-type speech ("I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself") at the University of California. (Weiser says that Gekko was partly based on Boesky and partly based on other high rollers. He was also partly based on Stone; Weisner writes that the director's "rants" and "unpublishable barbs proved to be the precise varnish with which I needed to coat Gekko.") The movie was treated as a big deal leading up to its release--Stone had won the Oscar for Platoon earlier in the year--but there was also a feeling reported in the trade press that nobody really had huge box office hopes for what amounted to "two hours of people talking about money." Then the 1987 Wall Street crash hit, and audiences who knew that something important was happening but were having trouble figuring out just what it was from reading the business section crowded into theaters to see if they could better make sense of the big news story of the day if it had Darryl Hannah in it. At the time, the 1987 Wall Street freak-out was widely reported as the death knell of the go-go-80s/Reagan era, but it turned out that greed had been, if not necessarily good, then sorely misunderestimated.

According to Weisner, Stone conceived of the idea of "a movie about Wall Street" pretty much on the spot, veering away from the idea of a movie that he had ordered Weisner to research about the 1950's quiz show scandals, and casting it in ambitious literary terms before either he or his collaborator had any idea of what it might entail in terms of a story or characters. "Read Crime and Punishment over the weekend," he told Weisner, "and we'll talk Monday." Weisner, to his credit, admits to having made do with the Cliff's Notes. When he reported back that he didn't see anything in there that they could apply to Wall Street, Stone, who may very well not have been clear about anything about Crime and Punishment except that he liked the title, told him to go read The Great Gatsby instead. (Weisner rented the movie.) After this unpromising beginning, things went on to work out okay, but Weisner marvels at the fact that in the last twenty years he's "run into quite a number of younger people, who upon discovering that I co-wrote the film, wax rhapsodic about it . . . but often for the wrong reasons...A typical example would be a business executive or a younger studio development person spouting something that goes like this: 'The movie changed my life. Once I saw it I knew that I wanted to get into such and such business. I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko.'" If he had it all to do over again, he says, he would rewrite Gekko's big line to read: "Greed is Good. But I've never seen a Brinks truck pull up to a cemetery." This would certainly have had a different effect on audiences, assuming that, like me, they would have had no earthly idea just what it's supposed to mean.

Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

15. THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (1982)

This Italian film, directed by the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, is about the people who don't fight in war but who just do their best to keep their lives from being completely overrun when it comes to town. In this case, the people are Tuscan, and it's late in the summer of 1944, with World War II winding down and the local fascists preparing to blow up anything they can before the Americans arrive. The people of the village sneak out under dead of night and prepare to hit the road, hoping to stay alive until they encounter the Yanks; the movie is presented as the memories of a woman who was six years old then, and it's infused with a playful surrealism that colors the many incidents, making them seem touched by magic. Which, at this point, is entirely appropriate for a movie where the people can't wait to embrace the invading Americans.

14. PLATOON (1986)

Drawing on memories from his own experiences in combat, Oliver Stone won Best Director and Best Picture for his grunt’s-eye view of the Vietnam War, where (in the words of star Charlie Sheen, back when he was a serious actor rather than a smirky sitcom star), “We did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves.” Earlier films (notably Apocalypse Now) had, of course, tackled the Southeast Asian “police action,” but the topic was generally as unpopular on the big screen as Iraq films are today. Platoon, premiering four years after the dedication of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., marked a cathartic cultural shift in America’s perception (and digestion) of the war: without Platoon’s critical and commercial success (and the flood of Vietnam movies, TV shows and video games that followed), a parody like 2008’s Tropic Thunder would have been unthinkable, not to mention sacrilegious. Yet, even though Vietnam era slang (being in “the shit”) and combat details (cigarette packs in helmet bands, etc.) are now war movie clichés, I’ll never forget seeing Platoon for the first time, when the wounds of America’s last great military misadventure were finally starting to heal, then watching shaken veterans around the theater hanging back after the lights came up, grouping together in pain and reminiscence.

13. SHAME (1968)

It’s probably no coincidence that most of Ingmar Bergman’s starkest films were made at the height of the Vietnam War, a time when the horrifying images of battle were being broadcast on television sets all over the world on a nightly basis. Bergman’s most explicit take on the horror and senselessness of war, Shame, begins in quintessential Bergman fashion, focusing on a pair of married musicians (played by Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, of course) who have retreated from their old lives onto a remote Swedish island. Their marriage could hardly be called happy, but it’s comfortable and secure, far removed from the rest of world, including a war that’s been raging in the distance. Suddenly and without warning, the war comes to their doorstep. But despite the handful of battle sequences, Shame has nothing to do with combat, and everything to do with the poisonous effect of war on everyone it touches. Ullmann, who is concerned only with the well-being of herself and her husband, finds herself accused of treason. Their home is destroyed. Ullmann sleeps with a local bureaucrat, perhaps out of self-preservation, but perhaps for other reasons. And Von Sydow reveals himself to be either a coward or a vindictive scumbag, depending on one’s perspective. Bergman refuses to pin the story to a single war -- it’s certainly not Vietnam, in spite of when he made it. Instead, Shame is a condemnation of the very idea of war and the effect it has on humanity -- not merely the literal death and destruction, but also the psychic fallout it leaves in its wake, which can linger long after any memory of why the war was fought in the first place.

12. HENRY V (1944) & (1988)

Shakespeare's play, which came in so handy for pundits looking for a point of comparison for George W. Bush's transformation into a great war leader after 9/11, was a propaganda piece celebrating the great victory of the outnumbered English by the overburdened French at the Battle of Agincourt. But because Shakespeare knew the value of ambiguity and multiple meanings, the work is open to various interpretations and can be staged in different ways to emphasize different possible themes. Laurence Olivier had a personal triumph as both director and star with the 1944 version, which, being made during World War II, not surprisingly treated the material as the occasion for a rousing, jingoistic hard sell for patriotic warfare. Forty-five years later, Kenneth Branagh, making his movie debut as a director and also starring in the title role, had no war to promote and so saw fit to stage the work as a big, baroque spectacle with ironic attitudes towards the expressions of patriotic fervor, film noir lighting, and what Pauline Kael called a "deranged Darth Vader entrance" for himself. As it is, both movies are huge, happy wallows in showy stagecraft and the best acting the British can always offer at the snap of a finger. (Branagh's, in particular, is the kind of movie where Paul Scofield has a walk-on.)

11. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925)

Sergei Eisenstein, master of the montage and one of the greatest pioneers of early cinema, made two classic war films, both very different from one another. His first, Battleship Potemkin, is often cited as one of the greatest movies of all time, and that’s not just hype: aside from the legendary Odessa Steps sequence, it contains some of the earliest uses of montage, and generally establishes itself as a movie using visual language light-years beyond what anyone else was doing at the time. But as a war film, it is unquestionably subversive: it was designed as a piece of pure propaganda in which the oppressed sailors of the battleship rise up in righteous anger against their cruel Czarist overlords. At no point do we have anything but sympathy for the heroic mutineers, and no less a personage than Josef Goebbels declared that anyone might become a Bolshevik after viewing the movie. Alexander Nevsky, on the other hand, is as much a celebration of patriotism and loyalty as Potemkin was of rebellion and revolution. It didn’t reach its peak of popularity until a few years after it was made, when Russia and Germany were at each other’s throats, but its ability to induce a patriotic fervor, as audiences cheered at the Russian peasant army driving out the Teutonic Knights, was unmistakable. And while it wasn’t the artistic success that Battleship Potemkin was, it did feature an unforgettable score and one scene that rivals the Odessa Steps sequence: the famous battle on the ice of Lake Peipus, which stands as one of the most thrilling battle sequences ever staged for film.

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

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

Take Five: Ride Hard

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Larry Bishop's Hell Ride opens in limited release this week. Advance buzz about the retroriffic biker exploitation flick isn't great, despite the fact that the movie features one of the most mindlessly entertaining trailers of recent years. Still, it's good to see the biker movie, a cultural leftover from the 1960s that has remained with us despite the transition of Harley culture from last refuge of dangerous lowlifes to weekend amusement of the upper middle class, survive in some form or another. For over 40 years, the lone, leather-clad biker on a flipped-back hog or amped-up chopper has been one of Hollywood's most enduring archetypes, used for everything fom a means to instill mindless terror to cheap comedy relief to, all too often, both. If Hell Ride does nothing more than give Michael Madsen a chance to play an all-new variant on his standard violent lowlife character, it will at least keep this archetype alive. Though, given that plenty of aging Tinseltown stars, writers and producers are themselves motorcycle enthusiasts, it's probably not in any immediate danger anyway. While you're waiting for Hell Ride to come to your local theater -- or, more likely, given its dismal advance hype, while you're waiting for it to show up at your local video rental bargain bin -- here's five more biker movies to help you unleash your inner scuzzball.

THE WILD ONE (1953)

Laslo Benedik's teen-menace movie started it all, in more ways than one. Not only was it the first major motion picture to deal with the alleged menace of out-of-countrol outlaw biker gangs (which, a little over ten years later, would developed into a full-blown moral panic, as exquisitely detailed in Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels), but it was one of the first movies to present us with the raw sexual charisma and magnetic, brooding talents of young Marlon Brando; it almost single-handedly started the 1950s craze among teen boys for leather jackets; and each gang in the film lent a name to a rock band (Brando's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Lee Marvin's Beatles). The events of the film -- which is still highly entertaining today, despite literally decades of imitators -- involve the takeover of a small California town by rival gangs of outlaw bikers; based on a story in Harper's (which was itself based on a real-life incident in Hollister, CA in 1947), it also starts a less pleasign tradition: that of ridiculously overstating the biker menace to appeal to your audience. Not only were the events in Hollister terribly mild compared to the dramatization in The Wild One (there was no real violence, and very little vandalism or criminal behavior), but the bikers involved were invited back a number of times over the years until it became something of a local tradition.

EASY RIDER (1969)

By 1969, the myth of the outlaw biker had transmogrified from simple post-WWII recreational activity to mysterious urban legend to full-blown moral panic, and finally, as evidenced in this notorious countercultural masterpiece, a counter-symbol of true freedom and the flight from small-mindedness and oppression in the face of stultifying all-American values. By the time Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson strapped on the helmets and hopped aboard their custom Captain America choppers, they were engaged in full-fledged reverse myth-making, transforming the rebel biker from the sort of dangerous threat to small-town America that Hopper had played a number of times in other, lesser exploitation movies to a vision of the divine fool, the holy innocent who, while he might consume barrels full of psilocybin and acres worth of grass, was in fact all that was good and decent about this country. And then, wouldn't you know it? Some greaseball redneck goes and blows his head off, just to be a dick. While there's certainly qualities to Easy Rider that make it a treat to watch (most especially Nicholson's performance, Laszlo Kovacs' cinematography, and bits of Terry Southern's screenplay), it's very much a product of its time; you may be glad it exists, but you're likely to spend a lot of time wondering exactly what happened back then.

GIMME SHELTER (1970)

Since Hunter Thompson didn't have a film crew with him when he was writing his Hell's Angels book, the Maysles Brothers' masterful documentary about the Rolling Stones' notorious concert at Altamont is likely to remain the definitive treatment of the most infamous of all outlaw biker groups on film. Unsurprisingly, it shows them at their worst but doesn't entirely play fair: while everyone knows the story of how the security at the concert was disastrously handed over to a lot of drunken, rowdy Angels who worked cheap and didn't care whose head they bashed in, and while there's no doubt that their killing of black concertgoer Meredith Hunter was an overreaction (and the racial slurs they deployed against him didn't help their cause one bit), it was only later made clear that the bikers had been right about Hunter: he was, as they'd said, been carry a gun, waving it around recklessly, and behaving in a very suspicious manner. Filmed evidence of this was why Hell's Angel Allen Passaro, who was primarily responsible for Hunter's death, was acquitted of murder. But as with most stories involving outlaw bikers, the truth got muddled and the legend got exaggerated: Altamont became widely known as the exact time and place that the Sixties died, and the Hell's Angels' reputation as lawless maniacs grew deeper and darker.

THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981)

After decades of imitators, parodies, and its own decreasing dividends in terms of sequels, it's hard to remember exactly how exciting the Mad Max movies were when they first came out. Hard, that is, until you sit down and watch one all the way through. Made at a time when Mel Gibson was still an electrifying performer and not a living self-parody, and directed by a George Miller light-years removed from feel-good movies about talking pigs, they still hold up a gold standard for smart, anarchic, terrifyingly high-velocity action movies, and Mad Max 2 -- more commonly known in the U.S. as The Road Warrior -- is the best of them. It's one of the best action movies of all time, and unlike most movies featuring car crashes, postapocalyptic wastelands, and murderous bandits who look like they were once members of Charged G.B.H., it doesn't sacrifice a shred of intelligence while bringing us its heart-stopping thrills. With oil recently clearing $300 a barrel, gas hitting over $4 a gallon, and many people -- both serious economic thinkers and paranoid tool-shed ranters -- considering what a "post-peak oil" world might look like, now is a good time to contemplate a future without gasoline, where deranged biker gangs run amok, and say: actually, that looks kinda cool.

BEYOND THE LAW (1992)

While public interest in outlaw biker gangs started to die out in the 1970s and had almost totally faded by the 1980s, the biker gangs themselves never went away, and even today, a fringe element of the culture is responsible for some fairly heinous drug dealing and the sort of violent turf wars that go with them. In 1982, an Arizona undercover cop infiltrated one such gang in order to bring them down after a particularly brutal drug killing, and Playboy magazine carried his compelling story. Over 10 years later, HBO produced this dramatic action thriller based on Dan Saxon's story, and while it didn't attract a great deal of attention at the time, it has gone on to become a bargain-bin cult classic, thanks largely to its highly realistic depiction of undercover procedures and its unusually literate storytelling. Okay, admittedly, some of the dialogue is a bit hokey, and Charlie Sheen looks absolutley ridiculous in a biker beard and leather vest, but it's a tightly constructed, nasty little thriller that's a lot better than it has any right to be. And hey, who's that playing a violent lowlife? You guessed it: Michael Madsen! How far we've come...

New Front Opens in Sheen-Richards Divorce Wars

Phil Nugent — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Sometimes a dead weight fixture of the celebrity culture turns a corner and reveals unsuspected talents that are very different from those that are most useful in the area where he or she has been flaunting his or her inadequacy all these years. George Hamilton and Leslie Nielson become self-parodying comedians; Ben Affleck, to the shock of one and all, reveals that God and nature meant for him to be a director. Now Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, both of whom once burned brightly as a mouthpiece alter ego for Oliver Stone and a walking pin-up in Wild Things respectively, before sliding very far very fast, have found their niche. Neither is going to be winning any Oscars or mistaken for a rocket scientist any time soon, but it turns out that they were put on this Earth to star in one of the splashiest public divorces since the golden days of Joan Collins and Peter Holm. ABC News and Sheila Markikar provide a handy timeline of the ongoing breakdown in the Sheen-Richards peace negotiations, which took a rocky turn this week with the premiere of Richards's new reality show on E!, It's Complicated. "She is out there bringing the issues up again by appearing on TV; he should understand at this point that any communication with her has a risk of going public and that's true for her too," said Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who may or may not have offered her comments while sitting on a lawn chair on Rodeo Drive next to a cardboard sign reading, "WILL TALK ABOUT CELEBRITIES' LEGAL PROBLEMS FOR FOOD". "Obviously, it's the divorce from hell."

Richards, 37, and Sheen, 42, married in 2002 and filed for divorce in April of 2006. Their legal battles, which have now been going on for half as long as the marriage did, center on custody of their two daughters, thee-year-old Sam and two-year-old Lola. But a close examination of the evidence makes you wonder if, parental issues aside, these kids don't still have deep feelings towards one another, one way or the other. "Sheen," writes Markikar, "accused Richards of asking for his sperm; Richards called said sperm 'prostitute-tranny infested.' Sheen claimed Richards calls him for no reason; Richards said Sheen sent her a text message telling her to 'get cancer' and 'rot in hell'." She considered sending him a text message back telling him to start looking like a scary lesbian with dyed black hair and a botched face lift so that he'd be reduced to taking a job in a sitcom with the guy who played Duckie, but then she realized that there are things no one should ever say to the father of one's children. There have been lulls in the action since 2006, period when both parties tried to make nice and showed that they were getting on with their lives by going on talk shows and refusing to shut up about their ex. But then things flare up again, with shrapnel flying in the direction of innocent bystanders, such as their kids and Richie Sambora. Sheen has been engaged since last year to Brooke Mueller, a real estate investor who refuses to comment on rumors that she's just using him to get to Duckie. It was around that time that Richards told Harper's Bazaar that she and her ex-husband may have been incompatible because, "I've never done drugs, never been around a prostitute, never known any porn stars. I couldn't even fathom that lifestyle. I grew up in Illinois, not L.A." (Maybe Richards used a stunt double for every minute of her performance in Wild Things except for saying the line, "It's warm today.") Now things are flaring up again because of the E! show; Sheen, having failed to get a court order barring Richards from allowing their kids to be shown on-camera, issued a call for a boycott through People magazine. (For her part, Richards, promoting the series on Larry King, made this clarifying statement: "I have nothing against Charlie's sperm...but I don't want anymore of it." Dissatisfied with this response, Sheen told ABC "that he's going to get a 'computer DNA expert' to prove on live television that Richards did indeed e-mail Mueller asking for Sheen's sperm." It is good that, this election year, our C-list celebrities are doing what they can to keep Americans focused on the issues that matter.

The Ten Greatest Mentors in Movie History, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Back in 1989, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg may have been making a point about what a bad-ass their archaeologist superhero when they cast the original James Bond as their hero's father and then showed that he felt no awe for this paragon: instead, he filched his personal style from some whip-wielding, ethically dubious mug in hobo-wear. In the forthcoming new Indy movie, Indy has acquired a son of his own, and it seems a safe bet that the movie will not end without li'l Indy looking up at his dad's craggy face and recognizing how lucky he is to have such an icon to admire and learn from. Thus does Indy come full circle as an instructional figure, an odd fate for a guy who used to sneak out of his campus office through the window so that he wouldn't have to face his students and risk earning his paycheck. If you're looking for a really impressive mentor, educator, guru, you could always do worse than get yourself into a movie.

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), WALL STREET (1987)

Mentors don't always do well in Oliver Stone movies. The hero of the autobiographical Platoon had two of them, but one of them got killed and the hero wound up having to shoot the other. The fast-talking uber-capitalist Gekko is luckier; he has a smart wardrobe to construct around his power suspenders, an Academy Award, and a famous speech that will get replayed on the nightly news every time there's a market downturn or somebody who's worth more than the national revenue of Venezuela gets nabbed for insider trading. Actually, Gekko's weak link is agreeing to share his wisdom with the obnoxious little mouth-breather played by Charlie Sheen, the scowling kid from the wrong side of the tracks with the chip on his shoulder. Unable to work out his issues, Sheen screws his sensei over and then adds injury to, well, injury by setting him up and selling him out to the feds. Back when Wall Street was in theaters, it was possible to feel sorry for Gordon at the end, but since then it's become possible to get some perspective on these things. Today, after his stay at some Club Fed, he probably has his own reality TV show. Charlie Sheen can watch it when he gets home from his job scrubbing public toilets.

Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), THE KARATE KID (1984)

I feel confident that Pat Morita's martial-arts-instructing janitor richly deserves his place here, even though I'm actually pretty sure that I never did see The Karate Kid. (Hell, I might be less sure if I had seen it.) Consider that this is a guy who, thanks to his Oscar-nominated performance here, managed to pull off a comeback almost a decade after he'd ill-advisedly abandoned the cast of Happy Days for a starring role in the sitcom Mr. T and Tina. (Can you tell me what ever became of Tina?) And he must be really good in this, because a lot of people lined up to see the movie, and they must have had their eyes glued to him, because I did see The Outsiders, and the one thing I remember from that is that looking at Ralph Macchio will make your eyeballs bleed. True, most of his biggest later roles would be in Karate Kid sequels, and while I'm not sure that I ever saw any of them either, I'm sure that they gave him the chance to really explore the possibilities of the character, plus he got to meet Hilary Swank. Clearly he was a fellow anyone would be well advised to seek out for advice, except on the subject of which Gus Van Sant movie to appear in. Wax on, wax off, motherfucker!

W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), BARTON FINK (1991)

Lured to Hollywood with the promise of easy money and big-screen glory, Barton Fink (John Turturro) quickly reaches an impasse in his writing. So with nowhere else to turn, his producer suggests that he find an established writer to mentor him. For his troubles, he gets W.P. Mayhew. Mayhew, played by a pre-Frasier John Mahoney, is a literary legend clearly modeled after William Faulkner, one who has toiled on countless screenplays for the studio in all possible genres. Tellingly, Barton first discovers Mayhew while puking out his liquid lunch in the men's room of the studio commissary. But Barton is so starstruck that he pursues him anyway, despite Mayhew's reputation as a washed-up souse. Unfortunately for the would-be student, the master whose guidance he seeks is too busy drinking and ranting at his secretary/live-in lover(Judy Davis) to give him much help with his writing, and indeed, it's Davis who's been doing most of the writing lately anyway. Yet while Mayhew isn't the mentor Fink bargained for, he's nonetheless valuable to Fink, providing him an objective lesson in what can happen to even truly great writers when they've been swallowed up by Hollywood. The lessons he teaches aren't pretty, but Barton isn't likely to forget them.

Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn), DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY (2004)

The schlubby regulars at Average Joe's gymnasium are facing difficult times. With their beloved gym struggling financially and facing takeover from a more sophisticated fitness center, they have to raise a boatload of money to keep from going under. So they do what any bunch of scrappy underdogs would do in a similar situation- they enter a nationwide dodgeball tournament, even though they're not especially athletic and can't compete with more experienced dodgeballers. What's a ragtag band of self-labeled Average Joes to do? Find a coach, that's what. Or more precisely, let a coach find them. But not just any coach, mind you. None other than Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn) a fifties-era dodgeball legend who's now confined to a wheelchair. With a mixture of abuse and tough love, Patches whips the Joes into shape using exercises such as one founded on the theory, "if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball." Faster than you can say "Eye of the Tiger," the Average Joes are national contenders. Of course, their ascent has less to do with Patches' coaching style than it does to the demands of the plot- to say nothing of divine intervention from Lance Armstrong and Chuck Norris- but Torn is so irascibly funny in the role that it seems wrong not to include him. After all, how can you not love a guy who gets a line like, "is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No, but I do it anyway, because it's sterile and I like the taste."

Cole (J. T. Walsh), THE GRIFTERS (1990)

Midway through its narrative, Stephen Frears's adaptation of Jim Thompson's seamiest pulp classic pulls the brakes on itself to fill in Myra's (Annette Bening) back story, to show that she learned the intricacies of the con-artist's game at the feet of the old pro Cole--played by J. T. Walsh, an actor with a blandly sturdy facade that, more often than not (Breakdown, Sling Blade, Nixon, The Last Seduction), served as the mask of a mean, sick puppy. Here, he's onscreen just long enough to show the highs of his profession (pulling off a sweet scam and celebrating after) and the lows (he goes nuts). Maybe the filmmakers wanted to get him on and off fast so that he didn't turn to the audience and make a bonus pitch for the United Way.

--Paul Clark; Phil Nugent

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