The Screengrab : corky romano

Your Thursday Afternoon “Twilight” Roundup

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed that we at the Screengrab have more or less completely ignored Twilight. We are aware that it’s a cultural phenomenon, and that the movie is out in theaters tomorrow, and that it’s predicted to be one of the biggest hits of the year. It’s just that none of us are teenage girls. Believe me, there are some among us who wish they were teenage girls, not that I’m naming any names. (See if you can PIERCE the veil of that cryptic comment, as if you were an arrow from the bow of Ted NUGENT!) But I digress. In the interest of fairness – and page views from the teenage girls who normally avoid the Screengrab like the plague – here is a handy roundup of the latest the Web has to offer in Twilight-mania.

The first reviews are in! Entertainment Weekly gives Twilight a B; critic Owen Gleiberman oozes over Robert Pattinson’s “dreamy, sculpted hunk of a teenage vampire,” who he describes as “Romeo, Heathcliff, James Dean, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one: a scruffy-gorgeous bloodsucker pinup who is really an angelic protector.’ Get a room, Owen! Slate’s Dana Stevens calls it “flawed yet transfixing,” reserving special praise for costume designer Wendy Chuck, who “manages to make weatherproof parkas look Goth.” Claudia Puig of USA Today dissents, citing “questionable casting, wooden acting, laughable dialogue and truly awful makeup.”

The LA Times reports that the Twilight setting of Forks, Washington is getting all the tourist business that used to go to Snoqualmie (aka “the real Twin Peaks”). “Forks High School is often besieged with Twilighters, who pose for pictures in front of the Spartans sign or scan the parking lot for Edward's car, a silver Volvo sedan. Some have even wandered inside to seek out the fictional characters. Still others have requested to be transferred to the school.” That’s okay, I still have my Twin Peaks Phys-Ed Dept. t-shirt somewhere.

Movie Retriever offers Six Excuses Grown-Ups Can Use for Going to See Twilight This Weekend. “Forget about the kid-vampire stuff. You're just a big fan of Twilight's director Catherine Hardwicke, ranging back to her days as a production designer - she designed Tapeheads, I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, and Tombstone! - to her more-recent career as a big-time director, helming movies like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown.”

Of course, there’s the inevitable face-off between Twilight and True Blood: BuddyTV asks “Who's the Better Vampire Boyfriend?”

At Rotten Tomatoes, dreamy Robert Pattinson dishes on his five favorite movies. One of them is Corky Romano. How’s that crush doing now, Owen?

Roger Ebert Gives Himself Thumbs Down

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Recently Roger Ebert gave the movie Tru Loved a one-star review in the Chicago Sun-Times. That in itself is not so unusual, although it’s more unusual than it used to be; on the “still playing” sidebar on Ebert’s main page, the only other movie to receive one star is Hell Ride. As far as I can tell, however, Ebert watched all of Hell Ride. He only watched eight minutes of Tru Loved.

After listing the gay indie’s faults – including complaints about the line readings, body language and a cameo from Bruce Vilanch – Ebrt’s original version of the review concludes thusly: “Full disclosure. I lifted the words ‘San Francisco to conservative suburbia with her lesbian mothers’ straight from the plot summary on IMDb.com, because I stopped watching the movie at the 00:08.05 point. IMDb is also where I found out about Bruce Vilanch's dual role. I never did see the lesbian mothers or my friend Bruce. For Tru Loved, the handwriting was on the wall. The returns were in. The case was closed. You know I'm right. Or tell me I'm wrong.”

Ebert has been reviewing movies for four decades now, and it’s a little hard to believe that he managed to resist the urge to pull this stunt for all that time. Think of all the movies he’s actually managed to sit through. He made it all the way to the end of BAPS, Boat Trip, Corky Romano and Ghost Dad, but it took Tru Loved to break him? Full disclosure: I have not seen Tru Loved, not even eight minutes of it. Maybe it is that bad, but it’s currently pulling 56% at Rotten Tomatoes. Nathan Lee of the New York Times says it has “heart” and Anna King of Time Out New York finds “a surprising elan.” Roger Ebert, you’ve had half your face surgically removed and can no longer speak. And it took this movie to break you? For real?

Not too surprisingly, Ebert has since had second thoughts. In an Oct. 16 journal entry, he reprints an email from his editor: “Just got down to the part where you mention that you watched ONLY eight minutes of this movie. I don't blame you but do you really want to open that door? I fear your admission will start people wondering whether this is a regular practice. Of course it's not but you don't want to raise those suspicions. The alternative: take out those grafs. Or I could kill the review and we could try to find a substitute. Your original review is clever and well-written but I think morally dishonest because you conceal your MO until the very end.” Ebert defended his decision at the time. “I hope the review truthfully records the process I went through.”

On Oct. 21, Ebert changed his mind. “It sent a wrong message. If I had seen the entire film, a review, however negative, would have been appropriate. But in reviewing the first eight minutes, I was guilty of too much affection for my prose… I wish I hadn't published the review.”

Ebert has now watched Tru Loved in its entirety, appending an update to the end of his original review. He’s still only giving it one star, though.

Related:
Classless Man in Voiceless Brawl
Take Five: Ride Hard

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

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

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

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