The Screengrab : death proof

Screengrab 2009 Preview: Paul Clark's Picks

Paul Clark — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

It’s a little risky looking forward at an entire upcoming year’s worth of releases and cherry-picking the promising-looking ones. It’s not just that many of the movies that are currently slated to come out within the next 12 months might get pushed back or shuttered altogether. It’s also the fact that as good as some movies might look on paper with their high-profile casts and extravagant budgets, they could very well end up awful. Just ask the makers of Town and Country.

That said, here (using the ever-popular “3 Up, 3 Down” format) are a handful of my most anticipated movies of 2009, along with three I’m dreading, and one wild card:

3 Up:

The Tree of Life

Marking the filmmaker’s quickest turnaround to date, Terrence Malick latest film comes a scant four years after his 2005 masterpiece The New World. That Malick has apparently decided to keep making movies is worth celebrating by itself, but that he’s finally getting around to his supposed “dream project” (which he’s allegedly been tinkering with for three decades now) is the stuff of Malick-fanboy fantasies.

Inglourious Basterds

Speaking of fanboy fantasies, it looks like Quentin Tarantino’s long-discussed World War II actioner is for real. Word from those who’ve read the script is that Basterds (Tarantino’s spelling) is all kinds of wanky, but don’t forget that people said the same about Kill Bill and Thunder Bolt Death Proof, and those turned out just fine. Not even Eli Roth’s acting could scare me away from this.

Avatar

I toyed with several choices in this spot- including Pixar’s Up and Von Trier’s Antichrist- but in the end, I kept coming back to Jim Cameron’s state-of-the-arts space opera. It’s been twelve years since Cameron made his last fiction feature (nothing you’d have heard of), and I’m plenty curious to see the project that convinced him to come back. Say what you will about his movies- there’s no denying Cameron’s technical mastery and knack for cinematic grandeur, and I’m eager to see how he pushes the envelope again this time around.

3 Down:

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Two summers ago, I hated Michael Bay’s Transformers, the movie that disproved my seemingly ironclad hypothesis that no movie that contains giant robot fights could ever be boring. After that movie’s massive box-office success, Hollywood has responded with a wave of big-screen toy/cartoon adaptations pitched to adults who really ought to know better (coming in 2012: The Jonas Brothers are Voltron!). Is there any chance this will actually be good? Don’t bet on it.

G-Force

You folks already know how I feel about this one. The only way this could’ve possibly been good would be if Robert Smigel or Trey Parker and Matt Stone were behind it, making it as bizarre as possible, but that’s not going to happen. Sorry, G-Force, but my flesh’n’fur cavies could take you all on without breaking a squeak, sassy celebrity voices or no.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Yet another sub-Sandler product from the Happy Madison crap factory. Normally, I wouldn’t bother, except that the title character’s name is too close to mine to ignore. I’m hoping this falls out of the public consciousness quickly so that I don’t have to worry about "Mall Cop" jokes for the next few years. Why couldn’t the character be “Paul Blart: Nuclear Physicist” or “Paul Blart: Vascular Surgeon?” How about “Paul Blart: World’s Greatest Film Critic?” Okay, maybe that’s pure fantasy, but I can dream, right?

Wild Card:

Sherlock Holmes

I was a fan of the Holmes series in my youth, so part of me is excited for this, not only for the cast (Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are inspired choices to play the newfangled Holmes and Watson), but also because the filmmakers are using the classic A Scandal in Bohemia story as their inspiration. So why isn’t this one of my most anticipated movies of 2009? Two words, folks- Guy Ritchie. Maybe he’ll be able to keep his tendencies toward visual noise and narrative incoherence in check this time, but if Ritchie screws the pooch on this seemingly foolproof project, I’m going to be seriously pissed.

Reviews By Request: Sukiyaki Western Django (2007, Takashi Miike)

Paul Clark — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As always, I’ll be polling you folks to determine my next Reviews By Request column, although this time the rules will be somewhat different. To vote, see the poll at the end of this review.

Of all of the United States’ contributions to popular culture, one of the most enduring has been the Western genre. In the mid- to late-1800s, stories about cowboys and the Wild West carved out a particularly American idiom in literature, and after the invention of the motion picture, many of the most popular movies- such as Edison and Porter’s The Great Train Robbery- were Westerns. In the classical age of Hollywood, few genres were more popular throughout the world than the Western.

By the 1950s, foreign filmmakers were beginning to show their Western influences, notably Akira Kurosawa in films like The Seven Samurai. And this influence became explicit by the 1960s when a number of Italian filmmakers began to produce Westerns in Europe. The resulting films quickly became known as “spaghetti Westerns,” and their popularity began a wave of Wild West stories made on foreign soil. There were “paella Westerns” in Spain, “cod Westerns” in Scandinavia, even “curry Westerns” in India. It was only a matter of time until a Japanese filmmaker would offer up a Japanese take on the genre, and it seems only natural that the filmmaker would be prolific genre-bender Takashi Miike. It also seems obvious that Quentin Tarantino would have some part in the proceedings, but that’s another issue entirely.

Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django is first and foremost an homage to classic Westerns of the past. Even its premise- a mysterious mercenary wanders into the middle of a turf war and proceeds to play both sides- is one of the archetypal storylines of the genre. It has served as the storyline for a number of “spaghetti Westerns” including Sergio Leone’s seminal A Fistful of Dollars and Corbucci’s Django, which lent Miike’s film its title. Of course, both films were essentially Western takes on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which in turn was a samurai version of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. But you get the idea- Miike’s genuflecting before the old masters. There’s even a whiff of Shakespeare in the story, in which the rival gangs are signified by the colors Red and White, in homage to England’s Wars of the Roses.

But although Miike has all his references in order, the end result is somewhat underwhelming. Miike hits all of the expected genre beats, but very little that happens in the film carries much weight. Part of the problem is that the characters just aren’t all that memorable. We meet the mysterious gunfighter, the samurai-styled leader of the Whites, the Shakespeare-obsessed leader of the Reds, the revenge-bent woman, the duplicitous lawman. Hell, there’s even a middle-aged woman who turns out to be the famed warrior Bloody Benten, whose name I would imagine was inspired by the same Japanese deity who lent her name to Screengrab favorite Benten Films. But Miike is so busy with other business that he never finds time to really do much with the people who populate his story. Even the gunfighter gets lost in the shuffle for much of the film.

As I mentioned before, Miike fan and friend Quentin Tarantino appears in the film, playing an old gunfighter named Ringo who tells the saga of Bloody Benten and literalizes the sukiyaki motif. Many of Tarantino’s own films also tend to be elaborate homages, but unlike Sukiyaki they tend to add up to something more than the sum of their references. Much of this has to do the way Tarantino actually manages to take time to establish the characters in his films- for example, the way he actually shows us some of Budd’s life in Kill Bill instead of just making him a rival, or the scene in Death Proof in which he reveals that the fearsome-looking Stuntman Mike is actually a whiny baby. On one level, Tarantino noodles in the margins of his story just as much as Miike, but while Tarantino’s noodlings lend his films additional depth, Miike’s tend to feel like one-off moments, designed to grab the attention but have little relevance on the story at large. Granted, some of these moments are pretty awesome- look at the way Ringo procures an egg for his sukiyaki, or the goofy touch of having the two-faced lawman suffer from multiple personality disorder- but put together they don’t really add up.

Or consider the films of Sergio Leone, whose storylines were every bit as impenetrable as Sukiyaki’s, but whose style pushed the iconography to such frenzied levels that they’re hypnotic on a moment-to-moment basis even if the broad outlines of the story get lost in the process. Leone’s “spaghetti Westerns” are Westerns taken to their stylistic extreme, and while “extreme” is a word that’s often associated with Miike’s films, Sukiyaki Western Django is a rarity- a Miike film that feels too tame. It’s entertaining enough, and the final shootout is good as these things go, but overall it’s a little disappointing. I’ve gone on record as a rabid fan of Audition, but with each subsequent Miike film I see I’ve come to realize that that film’s tight directorial control and bold formal structure was a rarity in his work. Sadly, Sukiyaki Western Django needed a more assured hand on the reins.

In my ongoing effort to see as many 2008 films as possible, I’ve decided to change the rules a bit this time around. Below, I’ve listed five of the most intriguing titles from the last four Reviews By Request polls (sorry, no House Bunny). As usual, I’m asking you to pick your favorite, but rather than only writing up the top vote-getter, I’ll write up the top three, one per week for the next three weeks. So, what’ll it be?

What 2008 movies would you like me to see? | BuzzDash polls

As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section. See you next week!

Thursday Morning Poll for July 31, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

On the heels of Quentin Tarantino’s recently announced Inglorious Bastards, we polled Screengrab readers about their favorite QT project to date. As expected, the favorite among our readers was his much feted 1994 Palme d’Or winner and Oscar nominee, Pulp Fiction. With 45% of the vote, Pulp bested all comers, with the second-place finisher, the Kill Bill saga, pulling in 27%, followed by a tie between Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown. Alas, no one went to the mat for Death Proof, which came across as second-tier QT to most fans and a summation of everything that rankled his detractors. Here’s hoping Bastards finds him at the top of his game again.

This week, we take on the Dark Knight hype, which has become more or less inescapable. As with many a pop culture phenomenon nowadays, Dark Knight fever caught on like wildfire, emerging atop the IMDb Top 250 Movies list by the end of its opening weekend. Then, just as quickly, the backlash began. Not even two weeks into its release, it seems like everyone around the blogosphere has an opinion on the movie, not to mention the hype. So, where do you stand?

Which most accurately describes your opinion of THE DARK KNIGHT? | BuzzDash

As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!

The Movie Moment(s): Notable Moments of 2007, Part 2

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Seth's secret shame, Superbad

2007 was a great year for dark and despairing cinema, but less so for really good comedy. But if nothing else, it can lay claim to at least one comedy sequence for the ages, even while it's so raunchy it would've made Curly Howard blush. In the scene, Seth (Jonah Hill) confesses to his best friend Evan (Michael Cera) his longstanding compulsion to draw penises. Of course, Evan has a hard time believing it (2007's funniest line in a walk: "Dicks? Like a man dick?") but the wonder of the scene is that Hill plays it completely straight. Seth is clearly ashamed of himself, angered by the trouble it's brought him, and annoyed that no one seems to understand his plight. In addition, screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (note the first names) make the details in the scene so specific that I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't drawn from real life. Which, of course, only makes it that much funnier.

Chase in the rain, We Own the Night

A lot of people would claim that the chase sequence at the end of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is the year's best action scene, but I'd go to the mat instead for James Gray's We Own the Night. Tarantino's was well-choreographed and nicely sustained to be sure, but it couldn't match the pure visceral impact of Gray's. For one thing, there's real urgency in the scene- Joaquin Phoenix's Bobby has just learned that his former Russian mob associates have not only figured out where he's hiding but are planning to kill his police chief dad, and he's racing through the rain to stop this from happening. In addition, the direction is almost unbearably tense, as Gray shoots the scene entirely from inside Phoenix's car, with brutal violence glimpsed through his windshield as the wiper blades whoosh back and forth. Gray has never been known as an action director, but he shows a gift for it here, which makes me all the more grateful that he's refused to sell his talents short by making a string of mediocre thrillers. Instead, he's done his own thing so far, and although his three films haven't won him a mass audience like Tarantino, he's remained an interesting filmmaker in his own right, and We Own the Night is his best film to date.

Little Anton Ego, Ratatouille

By now most of us expect greatness from Pixar, especially when Brad Bird is directing, but like any truly great filmmaker, Bird is still capable of surprising us with his talent. Nowhere in Ratatouille is this more true than a scene near the end of the film where the dreaded food critic Anton Ego (the inimitable Peter O'Toole) drops in at Gusteau's to review the food prepared by its celebrated new chef, Remy, a rat voiced by Patton Oswalt. Counter to popular logic, Remy serves him the relatively low-class dish ratatouille, the quality of which blindsides Ego so much that he briefly flashes back to the meals of his childhood. The beauty of the moment owes largely to its brevity, as Bird executes the flashback so suddenly and in so few brush strokes that it blindsided me with its simple perfection. Rather than coming off like a cheap Freudian reading of Ego's character, this scene speaks to something more universal, and it's Ratatouille's most vivid illustration of the idea that great food truly belongs to us all.