The Screengrab : debra winger

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Bambi’s Mother in BAMBI (1942) & Debra Winger in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

The actual moment that Debra Winger’s character dies in Terms of Endearment is all well and weepy (and fairly Goth, what with that deathbed make-up job), but the real reason James L. Brooks’ ten-hanky drama makes the list is the gut-punch scene where Winger’s dying Emma Greenway Horton says goodbye to her two sons in the hospital, easily the most harrowing family tragedy scene since the national trauma induced by the off-screen demise of Bambi’s mother (thanks to goddamn Man entering the forest) way back in 1942. In the all-time Top Ten of throat-lump-inducing lines of dialogue, it’s hard to beat Mr. Bambi’s grim pronouncement, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore.” But for me, no single moment of cinema is sadder than Winger’s Emma telling her youngest son, after their final visit together, “I think it went pretty well, don’t you?” -- except maybe the look on the little kid’s face when he bravely nods goodbye. (Now if you'll excuse me, I...uh...think there’s something in my eye...) (AO)

Warren Oates in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)

Bennie the down-on-his-luck piano player just wanted to make an easy buck. Some rich guy who calls himself El Jefe was promising money in exchange for proof that a poonhound Bennie knows, one Alfredo Garcia, was dead. Sure, Bennie knew that proof might involve a little grave robbery, but the promise of money and a new beginning with his ladyfriend Elita gave his small-change dreams a lift. What he didn't know was that every step he made was shadowed by death and failure. First he has to kill a couple of bikers who intend to rape Elita. Then, when he finds the body, he loses Elita along with whatever remnants of his soul he had kept scraped together. After he recovers his precious proof of death, the severed head of the poonhound, the death toll mounts furiously while Bennie grows more and more unhinged, monologuing in his car to the filthy, fly-streaked bag in which Garcia's head rots. There's something rotten in Bennie now. There's something rotten in the whole scenario, and when he finally confronts El Jefe, he's beyond caring about life and death. He has nowhere else to go, and the trajectory of his life will soon converge into a single point with the probability of his death. (HC)

Warren Oates in MAJOR DUNDEE (1965)

It's supposed to be Moby-Dick in the Old West, but where the Great Whaling Book starts cooking with grease about 2/3 of the way in, Major Dundee falls to pieces. With Charlton Heston and Richard Harris in the lead roles, there's a Christmas dinner's worth of ham smeared all over even the good parts. But the supporting cast is excellent. And when Warren Oates, playing ne'er-do-well Confederate soldier O.W. Hadley, deserts and is captured, the supporting staff quietly, almost wordlessly, shows up the stars of the movie. In the above scene, consider how natural Oates seems, how L.Q. Jones and Ben Johnson express their characters' tension, sorrow, and anger with barely a sentence between them. The movie falls apart after this. It seems that Oates, with his weird energy and comic timing, was the thread holding everything together. (HC)

Joel McCrea in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)

Although the clip is nowhere to be found on YouTube, Joel McCrea's Steve Judd goes out with a dignity that all who live by the gun -- or whatever "living by the gun" means metaphorically these days -- should aspire to. Earlier, he tells his old friend Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) that he "just wants to enter [his] house justified." When Westrum makes to steal the gold that's under their protection, Judd is a step ahead of him, but the disappointment in the way he looks at Westrum is almost worse than his threat to make Westrum stand trial. The final shootout isn't about the gold, though. It's about the girl they're protecting from the feral mining family she's gotten herself mixed up with. Westrum redeems himself at the end, choosing to take the honorable side and stand with his friend. When Judd is mortally wounded, Westrum has the wisdom to step back, shield the young people from the blunt reality of death, and give Judd the closure he wants: alone, justified, eyes gazing up at his beloved high country. (HC)

Toshiro Mifune in THRONE OF BLOOD (1957)

Here's something all of you aspiring regicides should know: when the witch or witches make a prophecy about your success or failure, don't share it with anyone. Macbeth saw his thanes defect to the other side and was finally dispatched by Macduff, whose rough birth made him Macbeth's ideal assassin. Toshiro Mifune's Lord Washizu meets death at the hands of his own archers in a spectacular rain of arrows as he runs from place to place, bamboo shafts sticking out of his body at odd angles, his face a mask of horror, fear, betrayal, and anger. It's a crime that this scene isn't available on the youtubes. (HC)

Takashi Shimura in IKIRU (1952)

Takashi Shimura's face is, even in rest, a remarkable vehicle for his emotions. Perhaps its highest calling was carrying the stricken look he uses throughout Ikiru as Kanji Watanabe, a dying bureaucrat who realizes that his life will mean nothing when he is gone. He decides that his decades of pointless public service will be worth it if he can turn a stinking cesspool of a lot in an unappreciated corner of Tokyo into a park with a playground for children. The final third of the movie leaps forward to his funeral, as his family and co-workers discuss his drive and mission, growing more and more grief-stricken as they realize why he fought so hard for this little playground. At the end, we hear and see the testimonial of a police officer who saw Watanabe on the final night of his life, sitting on a swing in the park that is his legacy for the world, with his face transformed. All of the fear and sadness that he had been carrying in every scene of the movie has become into a beaming look of pure and simple satisfaction and joy. It's one of the most impressive and powerful emotional gut-punches in all of cinema. (HC)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs

JENKINS!!!!! (a.k.a., Screengrab's Oscar Nod Prediction Results)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Just wanted to give a big Screengrab high-five to the always hardworking, frequently overlooked (until now) character actor Richard Jenkins for his well-deserved Best Actor nomination for The Visitor. I’ve been a Jenkins fan ever since his great comic role as the long-suffering federal agent in Flirting With Disaster, and I’m happy to see him get bumped to the A list (or at least the B+ list) at last.

It was also nice to see Michael Shannon vault onto the red carpet outta nowhere. The wife and I just saw Revolutionary Road the other night, and shortly thereafter we turned to each other and said, “Why no Best Supporting Actor buzz for the crazy guy?” So we’re glad the Academy felt the same way. (And Penelope Cruz was always a lock for a Best Supporting Actress nod, but I’m still happy it’s official.)

On the other hand, while I wasn’t really expecting Oscar love for Debra Winger or Sally Hawkins, it’s still too bad they got snubbed (although Hawkins at least got a nice shiny Golden Globe for her trouble).

In other news, the ongoing Benjamin Button love fest (really? Brad Pitt gave a better performance than Clint in Gran Torino?) continues to baffle me as much as the curious case of Doubt not being a Best Picture or Best Director contender despite nominations for the screenplay and just about every actor with a speaking part in the movie. (Man, the Academy must really hate Dutch angles!)

But the big question you’re asking yourself is: which Screengrab staffer (or reader) scored highest in our Oscar Nomination Prediction Pool?

Well, first I should mention the staff as a whole scored a (fairly) respectable B- with our collective overall picks, correctly guessing 24.5 out of 30 nominations (for an 81.67% accuracy rating, if I did the math right).

Although we flubbed one Best Picture prediction and one Best Director slot, I can’t say I’m terribly upset about the Academy snubbing Christopher Nolan or The Dark Knight. (Scott Von Doviak and Sarah Clyne Sundberg, meanwhile, were the only ones on the staff who picked The Reader for the fifth Best Picture spot, having fortuitously remembered that Academy bylaws require at least one Holocaust-themed nomination per year).

Speaking of which, the Screengrab accurately anticipated a Best Actress nomination for Kate Winslet...but only Sarah had the ESP-Fu to anticipate the nod would be for The Reader, not Revolutionary Road. EW.com explained it thusly: “The Academy overruled a campaign and placed Kate Winslet in the lead-acting category for The Reader instead of Revolutionary Road. She may not have gotten two nominations, but this increases her chance at an eventual win.” (Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure what they’re talking about.)

We also mistakenly forecast Best Actress noms for Cate Blanchett and the delightful Ms. Hawkins (although a few of us managed to correctly forecast nods for Angelina Jolie and Melissa Leo in our individual picks).

Nobody here (except, ahem, me) saw the Jenkins nomination coming, but I also joined the general mistaken consensus that Clint would snake a Best Actor nod away from Brad Pitt.

Finally, we only scored three and three and a half out of five in both tricky Best Supporting categories, favoring Ralph Fiennes and James Franco over Josh Brolin and Michael Shannon and (in a tie) Debra Winger and Kate Winslet (for The Reader...we’re still confused about that whole thing) over Taraji P. Henson.

As for which Screengrab writer (or reader playing along at home) had the most correct individual nomination predictions...well (ahem), I’ll just let the scores speak for themselves...

15 – Leonard Pierce
16 – Sarah Clyne Sundberg
21 – Iris Steensma
22 – Paul Clark
22 – Scott Von Doviak
24 – Andrew Osborne

Woo-hoo! Yes! In your face...uh...esteemed colleagues!

Okay, that's it for now! See you soon for the next round!

Related Stories:
Oscar Nominations Announced
Your 2008 Razzie Nominations
Screengrab Live Blogs The Golden Globes

Nine-Point Plans

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:15:00 GMT

It ain't Thanksgiving, but everyone wants a slice of the turkey. Most people have already made their New Year's resolutions (some of us have already broken them, for that matter), but up north, in Edmonton's Vue Weekly newspaper, critic Brian Gibson is asking not what he can do for Hollywood, but what Hollywood can do for him.

Shocked into a wishful reverie by a chance viewing of Clint Eastwood's embarrassing end-of-life project Gran Torino, Gibson delivers a nine-item wish list for what he hopes the movies will deliver in 2009. On his checklist are more realistic films about class and race, big comebacks from fading Hollywood actresses (including Screengrab favorite Debra Winger), more films by female directors, and "a damn good Canadian movie from a director other than Cronenberg, Egoyan or Maddin".

Never ones to miss out on the chance to jump someone else's train, we'd like to echo several of Gibson's wishes -- especially his desire to see serious film criticism make a comeback, and a better distribution system that ensures that people in locations like, oh, say Edmonton and San Antonio get a chance to see something other than blockbusters on the big screen a couple of times a year. And, to round out his list to an even dozen, here's three more things we'd like to see from the film world in 2009:

1. The emergence of a new and exciting national cinema. The last several years have seen the emergence of exciting and vibrant film scenes in places like South Korea, Spain, Thailand, and even Iran. But how about a new national cinema taking center stage? Enough great films have come out of Africa in the last few years to suggest they're due for a major renaissance; Arab cinema might finally bloom in the unlikely event that a prolonged period of politcal and economic stability settles in the Gulf; and Italian cinema has been in the doldrums for a number of decades.

2. Directors breaking out of their boxes. While there's something to be said for finding what you're good at and sticking with it, the emergence of several major talents in recent years who have confined themselves to the dreary and limited world of torture-porn horror movies gives one pause. Rob Zombie's movies are made by a man with a careful and crafty eye for visuals and a keen grasp of mood, and the first half The Strangers proved that young Bryan Bertino is a master of timing and a guy who knows how to wring tension out of a dramatic scene or a simple framing shot. We'd like to stop imaging what it would be like if these guys turned their obvious skills towards something a little bit more mature, and actually see it.

3. Watchmen being worth watching. It doesn't seem like so goddamn much to ask.

RELATED POSTS:

Debra Winger: Searched For and Found

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like to See

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button's Undeserved Oscar Buzz

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

So, I suppose I should first concede that I’m not exactly the target audience for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I only saw it because my wife likes Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, and she wound up enjoying the movie (somewhat) more than me as well.

And it’s not like there aren’t good moments: every scene with the aforementioned Ms. Swinton, for instance. And Jared Harris is a hoot as a rollicking sea captain...in fact, in the midst of the film's long, long, ever-so-long 166 minute running time, the half hour-ish section with the intertwining Swinton/Harris subplots is certainly worthy of Oscar consideration, featuring as it does a vivid romance and a breathtaking World War II battle scene between a tugboat and a Nazi sub, illuminated by the flaming wreckage of a torpedoed battleship. Good stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say.

But Benjamin Button isn’t generating Oscar buzz as a short subject. Somehow, people think the whole thing should be considered for a Best Picture statuette, complete with nominations (and maybe even awards!) for Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, director David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth. Which strikes me a bit odd, considering how bad the movie is.

Now, I don’t want to come down too hard on Ms. Henson: I know from Hustle & Flow (and even Smoking Aces) that she’s a good and interesting actress, and she does the best she can here with a one-dimensional "supportive mother" gig...but why this rote, uneventful role is considered more Oscar-worthy than Debra Winger’s barnburner performance in Rachel Getting Married is bizarre to the point of incomprehensibility.

Fincher, meanwhile, gives good mise en scène throughout, making fine use of CGI and production design to create some pretty (though bloodless) depictions of New Orleans in the ‘20s, Russia in the ‘40s, New York in the ‘50s, etc. And he kicks in some nice set pieces, like the Swinton/Harris bits and a running gag about lightning. But a director is also supposed to have what we in the business call a “take” on his material, even if he’s saddled with a gimmicky, unfocused screenplay full of vague, generic insights like “You never know what's comin' for ya.” Fincher is also responsible for some flat-out bad decisions like the unnecessary and distracting frame story, in which a dull, constipated Julia Ormond reads (and reads and reads) Benjamin Button’s diary to mumbly old Cate Blanchett while Hurricane Katrina bears down on them for no particular reason.

Indeed, the casting of Blanchett turns out to be another of Fincher’s missteps. While the actress has been good and sometimes even great in other roles, her alien beauty (and strangely unyielding red ponytail, present in just about every era of the story) more or less defeats the best efforts of the make-up and CGI teams assigned to convince us her character is aging while Button grows younger. Not counting the heavy prosthetics of her deathbed scenes, Blanchett’s "Daisy" always looks pretty much like the thirtysomething actress playing her, from her teens through her seventies, and not knowing how old the character's supposed to be at any given time gets awfully confusing in a movie about asynchronous timelines, especially when Daisy and Benjamin Button are trying to figure out the logistics of their relationship...although the near total lack of chemistry between Blanchett and Pitt is a much bigger problem in that department.

Blanchett’s character was semi-conscious through most of Babel, making it difficult to gauge her chemistry with Pitt in their previous go-round, but here the alleged lifelong soulmates seem to have nothing in common (apart from their ridiculous beauty). I’d blame Pitt, but he manages to generate plenty of believable heat with Swinton, so either Swinton’s so good she raises Pitt’s game in their scenes together (a distinct possibility) or else Blanchett's usual vibrance is simply weighed down by her distractingly gooey Naawwwwlins accent, underwritten character and dead weight co-star and there's not a hell of a lot she can do about it. (Or both.)

And Pitt really does nothing interesting with his role (in the same way Roth and Fincher do nothing interesting with a premise David Lynch or David Cronenberg would've knocked right the fuck out of the park). Sure, it's funny to see Pitt running around as a tiny little geezer, and in his romantic hunk scenes he certainly looks like a movie star...but his character is more or less completely passive throughout the story, and I never believed him as a young old man or an old young man: he’s basically just Brad Pitt in a series of wigs.

So, aside from Swinton and the art department, why exactly is Benjamin Button considered so dang award-worthy? Well, David Wildman of The Weekly Dig thinks it’s because “Pitt as an old fart looks shockingly similar to the way Robert Redford looks now. My theory is that Hollywood’s elite are feeling their mortality, as the boomers head off toward the sunset, and it isn’t pretty. When the WWII generation was getting to this point back around the ‘60s, they stoically denied it, pretending they could swing just like the kids. John Wayne played the same character until he keeled over, and codgers like Dean Martin posed as sexy secret agents. Pitt is still relatively young and handsome, but he can’t help gazing at his navel like a pussy and neurotically obsessing about that inevitable light at the end of the tunnel.”

Of course, in this case, the light may very well be glinting off an undeserved Oscar.

Related Stories:
Screengrab Predicts the Oscars: Nominations
Trailer Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Screengrab Predicts The Oscars: Nominations (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

In the wee hours of January 22nd (my birthday by the way – Target gift cards are always appreciated!), the nominations for the 81st Academy Awards will be announced by whichever two actors lost the coin-toss at the 80th Academy Awards ceremony last February. (Apparently the nominations were originally supposed to be announced on January 20th, but apparently there’s some big parade or whatever going on that day.)

Anyway, next to making year-end lists and posting cleavagey shots of Scarlett Johannson, there’s nothing your friends at the Screengrab enjoy more than Oscar predictions.

This year, we’re keeping score...and you (yes, YOU!) can play along at home by posting your predictions (down yonder in the Comments section) for the five nominees in each of the following major categories (along with your long-range guess for the winners of each award): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress.

After the actual nominees are announced, we’ll tally up the points and see which Screengrabber (or Commenter!) had the most accurate predictions, thus earning the top-seed spot going into the full-scale Oscar prediction play-offs.

For the Screengrab’s individual and collective picks, we'll see you after the jump!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Scott Von Doviak Predicts:

NOMINEES
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)
Debra Winger (Rachel Getting Married)
Kate Winslet (The Reader)

Penelope Cruz is the thinking man's choice for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Kate Winslet will pull double duty for taking it all off in The Reader. Speaking of taking it all off, how about Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler? Viola Davis stole the show with five minutes in Doubt. And how about trying to lure Debra Winger back to full-time work with a nomination for Rachel Getting Married?

WINNER
Cruz, resurrecting the Woody Allen lock on this category from a decade ago.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts:

NOMINEES
Amy Adams (Doubt)
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Beyoncé Knowles (Cadillac Records)
Samantha Morton (Synecdoche, New York)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

There are surprisingly few obvious choices for this one. Penelope Cruz will get nominated for Vicky Cristina Barcelona because it's the first good Woody Allen pic in years and nobody else is going to get any recognition for it. Marisa Tomei is here for playing a stripper, which is the type of thing that leads to nomination, unless of course you are Elizabeth Berkley. Amy Adams seems like another likely contender and Samantha Morton and Beyoncé Knowles, well they don't seem likely at all… I just like the thought of it really.

Paul Clark Predicts:

NOMINEES
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)
Kate Winslet (The Reader)

Anyone who is familiar with Doubt knows that the character of Mrs. Miller is prime awards bait, and Davis most definitely brought her game to the role. And Cruz’s memorably over-the-top turn as Vicky Cristina Barcelona’s unhinged Maria Elena promises to be the first acting nomination from a Woody Allen film in nearly a decade (while you’re at it, pencil Allen in for his 15th Best Original Screenplay nomination). Winslet looks like she’s on track to rack up nomination #6 and perhaps even #7 this year, and I’m guessing that this’ll be her year to win one. Another name that keeps popping up in the precursor awards is Amy Adams, but do you think that the voters will nominate all four principle actors from a movie they didn’t love enough to nominate for Best Picture? I doubt it. Looking much more likely are one-time Oscar winner Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler, and Taraji P. Henson, whose adorable performance as Benjamin Button’s adoptive mother Queenie is a highlight of a movie that ought to get plenty of Academy attention.

WINNER
Kate Winslet

Andrew Osborne Predicts:

NOMINEES
Amy Adams (Doubt)
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)
Debra Winger (Rachel Getting Married)

Why no love for Debra Winger’s blistering mama in Rachel Getting Married? Nobody’s talking up her Academy Award chances and as far as I know, only the Spirit awards have given a nod to one of last year's most memorable performances...but voting emotionally rather than strategically is always a sure way to hemorrhage points in your office Oscar pool (see my prediction snub of Sally Hawkins under Best Actress), so I’ll go with a safe bet for my first choice instead: Penelope Cruz, who’s also going to win (okay, to be honest, this pick is strategic and emotional, since she gave another one of my favorite performances of 2008, raising all surrounding boats on her raging, hormonal tide in Vicky Cristina Barcelona). But if it’s not Cruz, then it’s hard to imagine anyone beating Viola Davis, who was flat-out fantastic in Doubt. (Actually, now that I think about it...scratch Cruz and put me down for Davis: in such a tight race, a single vote could easily tip the balance, and for all I know, that swing vote could be Mia Farrow.) Aside from those two sure things, though, Supporting Actress is always the trickiest of the major categories to predict. Nobody expected Marisa Tomei to win for My Cousin Vinny way back in ‘92, for instance (though nobody was too surprised to see her fall victim to the Best Supporting Actress curse shortly thereafter); still, despite rumors that she’s, um, a bit of a handful to work with, she’s still a Made Guy in the Academy family, and it seems about time for Oscar to welcome her back. As for Amy Adams...well, she's America’s (and Hollywood’s) latest sweetheart, she looks good in red carpet couture and she did nice work in Doubt, so I expect she’ll snag the fourth spot. And finally...ah, what the hell: Winger.

WINNER
Viola Davis

Leonard Pierce Predicts:

Although 2008 got widely (and, I think, somewhat unfairly) smeared as an off year for movies, it was definitely a good year for the kinds of flicks that Oscar voters go for. With plenty of historical epics, ‘message’ pictures, and the kinds of ripe, fruity performances that always rack up AMPAS gold, the year may not have been a great one for the art house crowds, but it should provide the kind of entertainment at the Oscar ceremonies that Hugh Jackman won’t. Forthwith, my predictions for what’ll show up on the ballots in six major categories (the sure-fire lock: that I’ll make a total ass of myself with these picks).

NOMINATIONS
Amy Adams (Doubt)
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Amy Ryan (The Changeling)
Kate Winslet (The Reader)

The Academy will nominate a Woody Allen movie, as they do every few years just to get on his nerves, and movie fans will grind their teeth trying to figure out which Amy is which, distracting them from their usual annual confusion over why two actresses from the same movie got the nod. But in the end, Winslet will take home the statue for The Reader, a movie that’s going to get stiffed everywhere but in the acting categories. BIGGEST SCREWJOB: Debra Winger’s wonderful turn in Rachel Getting Married will be ignored, because the Academy can only handle so many comeback stories at a time.

WINNER
Kate Winslet

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NOMINEES
AMY ADAMS, PENELOPE CRUZ, VIOLA DAVIS, MARISA TOMEI, KATE WINSLET

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WINNER
KATE WINSLET

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

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Debra Winger: Searched for and Found

Phil Nugent — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:45:00 GMT

Rachel Cooke managed to swing a face to face with Debra Winger for the Guardian, who in addition to her flyspeck of a role in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, has published a book, Undiscovered, described by Cooke as "a collection of brief essays and poems with illustrations of doors and windows by her friend, the famous tightrope walker Philippe Petit"--the Man on Wire guy. "I'm allergic to chapters," Winger told Cooke "They give me hives. I wanted doors and portals to illustrate the idea of transformations. I showed Philippe the old doors I collect - I keep them in my barn - and he took out his journal, and it was filled with drawings of doors. So that was it." The book has turned into a hit on the basis of word of mouth, a development that is very pleasing to Winger, whose issues with the bullshit connected to fame surfaced when she was encouraged to promote it. "I wanted to put it out under a pseudonym, but they said: are you fucking nuts? I tried going on The View, and the last time I experienced anything like that was when I was a child, and I got caught in a rip tide, and the lifeguard was yelling 'just relax!' Everyone's talking on top of each other, and it's humiliating, and I have to suffer the whole 'where have you been?' thing - as if the person asking me has been at the center of the universe all this time, and I just haven't checked in."

Of course, a lot of people wonder where Winger--who has spent a lot of the time in recent years tending to her farm in upstate New York with her husband, the actor Arliss Howard (who directed her in the 2002 movie Big Bad Love)--has been because they miss watching her in movies. It's gratifying to hear that Winger would have no objections to doing more work in movies if she could be spared the bullshit, and bewildering to hear that her appearance in Rachel Getting Married hasn't led to a spate of offers. (Though it could be that most directors assume that anyone who gets her to work for him must know the secret handshake that it takes to get her to say yes. Demme was one of those who only managed to summon up the courage to approach her after having come to terms with his assumption that she'd say no.) But Winger's name has also taken on this second life as a catch phrase for the hard time that even greatly gifted actresses have getting treated with respect, let alone offered the roles they deserve. It's fascinating to hear that she is, to put it gently, as ambivalent about this as she is about anything else. The sense that Winger might be a symbol of something gelled after Rosanna Arquette's 2001 documentary Searching for Debra Winger. "I was interviewed for it when it was called something else," she recalls, "and I said to Rosanna at the time, this is your question. I had no idea what she planned on calling the film, and she made me the poster child for something I was not talking about. I didn't give a shit [about what Hollywood was going to do to me]. I was just tired of it." With regard to the scarcity of good roles for actresses, Winger herself would rather address practical issues, such as her observation that "women don't write enough. Because who do they expect to write these roles? Men?"

One thing that Winger has going for her is that, at 53, she still has an expressive kisser, in contrast to, as she delicately puts it, "those boiled faces!" On the other hand, "I have a movie out now and I can't bear to watch it. I see myself up there, and it's not normal to scrutinise your own face on a screen this big; it's like opening a vein. So I do have some compassion for Nicole Kidman, or whoever, who has obviously looked at her face and sort of dissected it, like it's a thing." It's okay, honey, you don't have to add "or whoever" after you say "Nicole Kidman." At film festivals, "the celebrities are dragging their movies in, going 'look at this!' instead of the movie being the thing, and they're just there to support it. It's a case of: 'Look at my dress, at my hair, at my face and ... oh, by the way, there's a movie here, too!' I have this character in my head. She keeps appearing places: on trains, in the city, on the highway. I see her out there. She is heroic, but not like any hero we've ever seen. Society makes women of a certain age invisible. It's convenient. Remember our mothers? How inconvenient they were to us? It's like that, on a grand scale. In the early part of my life I carried the flame for fiery women: perky women who were not dumb. And now I feel like I could be the woman to play this role: the invisible woman." So you're saying that you would play it if only somebody would write it? "As you know, I've long been ambivalent about the whole movie star thing. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to, uh ... work."

Andrew Osborne's Top Ten Movies of 2008 (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:47:00 GMT

So, by the end of first quarter 2008, I’d seen exactly one memorably list-worthy movie (see #7) and figured it was just gonna be one of those low tide kinda years after a pretty strong 2007 (Knocked Up, Juno, The King of Kong, Gone Baby Gone, Hell On Wheels, Zodiac, 2 Days In Paris, etcetera). And yet, looking back over the past twelve months, I have to admit, to paraphrase Charlie Brown, it wasn’t such a bad little tree, with a lot of perfectly enjoyable (if not terribly memorable) films, as well as a number of...

WILDCARDS: (potentially list-worthy movies unseen by moi in 2008): Man On Wire, Encounters at the End of the World, Waltz with Bashir, Trouble the Water, Let the Right One In, Revolutionary Road, Gran Torino

And now, the Top 10 I did see...

1. YOUNG@HEART

Usually, the top of my Top Ten list is something I’d be happy to watch again at the drop of a hat, but I suspect I’ll never, ever sit through Young@Heart again: the first time was wrenching (and memorable) enough. My wife and I saw the film at the Harvard Square Loews with my Dad, who’s been in AARP territory for quite a while now, and a theater half full of strangers. For the first thirty minutes or so, Stephen Walker’s documentary about feisty senior citizens singing ironic hipster doofus perennials like “I Wanna Be Sedated” and “Staying Alive” was a hoot...and then the first lovable oldster died. And then another, and another, like some horror movie of age we’re all trapped in, and suddenly every single person in the theater was getting smacked right in the kisser with the harsh realities of mortality, and nearly all of us were openly sobbing. Yet for all that, the film is never mawkish: the chorus members are presented as a platoon of happy warriors, singing at the top of their lungs as they march into the shadow of the valley of death, fighting tooth and nail for every last drop of joy they can squeeze out of life, even as their comrades fall around them. As I said before in my 2008 half-time wrap-up, I try not to judge people based on their personal tastes when it comes to movies, but if you can sit through the Young@Heartster’s performance of Coldplay’s “Fix You” (punctuated by the rasp and click of the soloist’s respirator) without a lump in your throat, you may need to check your own pulse.

2. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

While not as powerful or memorable as Young@Heart, Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky was an equally heartfelt (and far less harrowing) film-going experience, with a similar theme (not to mention a timely one, given the world’s collective George W. Bush hangover): get busy living or get busy dying. Yes, life can be tough and full of injustice and, yes, it’s easy to be aloof and snarky and negative about it, but whether or not that makes anything better (for yourself or anyone else) is the question Leigh tackles here. Underpaid elementary school teacher Poppy (the infectiously great Sally Hawkins) is a relentlessly cheery optimist, the sort of person easily dismissed as a shallow, annoying bubblehead...in fact, one guy I know found the character so irritating he ditched the film after fifteen minutes. But then Poppy encounters her polar opposite, a seething mass of bitterness (embodied in a visceral performance by Eddie Marsan) whose dismal, head-full-of-spiders malevolence provides the necessary contrast to show the true strength and value of Hawkins’ irrepressible sunbeam, raising questions (and suspense) about which of the two worldviews will ultimately triumph.

3. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

Like my fellow Screengrabber Scott Von Doviak, I didn’t expect this Jonathan Demme curiosity to wind up on my Best of 2008 list. Watching it the first time, it seemed unfocused and self-indulgent with its meandering Altman-wannabe pace, its self-consciously eccentric diversity and its melodramatic Lifetime-esque family drama. Yet because of its unusual construction, Rachel Getting Married feels now like a memory of an actual wedding I attended rather than just a movie I watched, adding extra punch to my recollections of the infrequent but correspondingly vivid moments of drama like the blistering showdown between Anne Hathaway’s loose cannon recovering addict Kym (a.k.a. Shiva the Destroyer) and her mother (Debra Winger...damn!) –- though even if Demme hadn’t gotten all artsy with the structure, Hathaway’s mesmerizing performance alone would have been worth the price of admission.

4. FROST/NIXON

Ron Howard’s cinematic adaptation of the acclaimed Peter Morgan play is what I call a “guys-in-suits” movie (one of my favorite genres) where formidable, top-level professionals like Howard, Morgan, Frank Langella (recreating his Tony-winning stage performance as Nixon) and the reliably great Michael Sheen (as Frost) focus their collective talents on a film about formidable, top-level professionals (like the real Frost and Nixon), sparring and strategizing and walking quickly down hallways and corridors rattling off witty bon mots and dense bits of jargon in the midst of high-stakes negotiations and race-against-time showdowns. Some critics have noted the actual historic impact of the Frost/Nixon interviews wasn’t really all that monumental, but the film charts high on my list as an entertaining poker tournament between two fascinating characters (with extra points for Toby Jones’ hilarious cameo as super-agent Swifty Lazar).

5. MILK

Sometimes timing is everything. In twenty years, critics will still be praising Sean Penn’s amazing transformation from scowling, self-important killjoy movie star into sweet, gawky force-of-nature gay activist Harvey Milk, but hopefully by 2028 this film will seem like just another well-made but otherwise run-of-the-mill “issue” film about an issue that’s no longer really an issue. But here in 2008, in the wake of the Proposition 8 disgrace, Milk is still, sadly, very much of the moment, and even for some progressives, the casual man-on-man kissing and romance between Penn’s character and his lovers (James Franco and Diego Luna) is a rare enough sight to give pause. From a historical standpoint, I was horrified to learn that Dan White (well captured by Josh Brolin in a chilling “mundanity of evil” performance) could murder Harvey Milk and the freakin’ mayor of a major American city in cold blood and get just seven years in prison on a manslaughter rap...that fact, combined with the anti-gay slanders of the McCain/Palin campaign (and, really, every Republican campaign in recent memory), the controversy over Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural and the sense of communion at the packed house screenings of Milk during its opening weekend are just some of the reasons Gus Van Sant’s good movie feels like such a great and important one now.

Click Here For Part Two

Honorable Mention: The Top Leading Ladies of All Time (Part Seven)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:00:00 GMT

LOUISE BROOKS (1906-1985)

It may seem odd to include an actress whose career spanned little more than a decade and whose reputation rests almost entirely on two movies on a list of the greatest leading ladies of all time. Yet in the case of Louise Brooks, no explanation should be required. A former Ziegfeld Girl, Brooks came to Hollywood at a time when the biggest female draw was “American’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford, who continued playing girlish characters well into her thirties. With her trademark black bob, pouty mouth and decidedly adult sensuality, Brooks couldn’t fit the type if she tried, and her outspoken nature and resistance to the narrow range of roles offered her led her to walk out on her Paramount contract. Effectively blackballed by the studios, she quickly fell in with German filmmaker G.W. Pabst, a collaboration that resulted in her two most famous films, Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Thousands of miles from Hollywood, Brooks was finally able to play roles perfectly suited to her persona -- sexually-liberated, independent, and defiant. Her two films with Pabst finally brought her real big-screen stardom, and surely enough, Hollywood lured her back. Alas, the studios still didn’t know what to do with her (turning down the female lead in The Public Enemy probably didn’t help) and Brooks’ career fizzled out by the end of the 1930s. But big-screen stardom was only one chapter in Brooks’ fascinating life -- after her retirement, she worked as a ballroom-dancing teacher and a salesgirl, and for a time she was the mistress of CBS founder William Paley before becoming a call girl. But perhaps Brooks’ greatest post-fame role was as a writer and vivid raconteur of the classic era of Hollywood, whose witty memoirs of her younger days contain some of the best writing in the genre. Even in her written work, she remained defiant and unapologetic -- unmistakably, quintessentially Louise Brooks.

VANESSA REDGRAVE (1937 - )

For more than forty years, Redgrave has kept surprising audiences. For a few years there in the late sixties, in such movies as Blow Up and Morgan, she seemed to be a budding movie star and sex symbol, albeit one who was an uncommonly tall drink of water. For most of her career, though, she's been undefinable: you might call her an institution, except that she's not boring. On the contrary, in many of the prestige literary adaptations of which she's been a part, she's often been the lonely pulse still beating in a work of taxidermy. Her primary concern in choosing her projects seems to be whether they give her the chance to try something new and challenging, which has led her to such unexpected choices as playing the transsexual tennis player Dr. Renee Richards on TV. And she makes great daughters.

SUSAN SARANDON (1946 - )

Sarandon aged as beautifully as anyone in the history of movies, both as a woman and as an actress. The Rocky Horror Picture Show wasn't all she did during the seventies, though it might be a mercy to pretend that it was. (She also took a bath with a hippie and got shot in the back by her hippie-hating dad in Joe, fell off the wing of Robert Redford's plane in The Great Waldo Pepper, sired Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby, and was the last woman standing at the end of The Other Side of Midnight.) Her real career began in earnest with her wide-awake performance in Atlantic City, applying lemons to her skin and giving Burt Lancaster something to think about in the winter of his years. Bull Durham and her string recital in The Witches of Eastwick solidified her standing as a tempestuous cloud of a romantic sex object, though her most distinctive role, in such movies as Lorenzo's Oil and Safe Passage and Little Women, may be that of the fieriest mother in pictures, in every sense of the term.

EMMA THOMPSON (1959 - )

In most of her earliest screen roles (Henry V, Dead Again, Peter's Friends, Much Ado About Nothing and the TV miniseries Fortunes of War), in which she was directed by and and co-starred with Kenneth Branagh, Thompson, who was married to Branagh at the time, was widely taken for a charming adornment to her husband's second-coming-of-Laurence-Olivier act. Today, thirteen years after the marriage ended, Thompson is an international treasure who appears too seldom in roles too small for her, while Branagh is recognized as that douchebag who thought it would be a good idea to cast Robert De Niro as Frankenstein's monster and model his makeup after my uncle Lido, the guy who fell off the construction site beam and landed on his head. Liberated, Thompson did fine work in The Remains of the Day, In the Name of the Father and Carrington, though she arranged for her own best opportunity by adapting Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility for herself to star in and Ang Lee to direct.

DEBRA WINGER (1955 - )

In the early 1980s, in Urban Cowboy, An Officer and a Gentlemen, Terms of Endearment, and the too-little-seen Mike's Murder, Winger made direct contact with audiences in a way that made it seem as if nothing could slow her career down, let alone stop it. In fact, she was slowed down, and stopped for a while, by an industry that lured her into lucrative traps like Legal Eagles -- for an actor like Winger, the cinematic equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits -- until she felt that she had to withdraw to keep her sanity. Many of her daring big tries, such as her stab at incarnating Jane Bowles in The Sheltering Sky, broke down on the runway, and many of her most remarkable performances got tucked into movies like Everybody Wins that nobody saw. Between 1993 and 1995, she was paired onscreen romantically with both Anthony Hopkins and Billy Crystal, a new definition of flailing. In 1996, she married the actor Arliss Howard and began a long break from acting in movies. It was during that dry spell that Rosanna Arquette directed a documentary about the never-ending frustrations of being an actress and called it Searching for Debra Winger. It's nice that she's become a symbol of something; she's also started gingerly sneaking back onscreen (as in the current Rachel Getting Married), which is a damn sight nicer.

JEAN SIMMONS (1929 - )

She was one silky number. At seventeen, she played the young Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations, and dealt the movie an awful blow when her character grew up and had to be replaced in the latter half by Valerie Hobson. A year later, she played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet. Her luck in Hollywood was less steady, and she arrived in time to get sucked into a lot of dull epics, such as The Robe, The Egyptian, and Desiree, in which she got into romantic clinches with Marlon Brando, which might not have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that he was supposed to be Napoleon. (At least it wasn't like their later pairing in Guys and Dolls where she had to put up with him singing at her.) Still, if you ever find yourself too hung over to change the channel when one of these movies comes on, you might find yourself inordinately grateful that she's there, looking just embarrassed enough about what's going on around her to earn your sympathy but not so mortified that you feel kind of stupid for watching. Her best epic was certainly Spartacus, where the scenes in which Kirk Douglas is denied her company by the guy holding the whip serve as concrete evidence that it would really suck to be a Roman slave. (Her best performance in a Hollywood movie may be in the smaller scale but still hokey Home Before Dark.) In more recent decades, she turned up in enough network miniseries (The Thorn Birds, North and South Books One and Two, not to mention her role in the 1991 revival of Dark Shadows) to establish that her sense of humor was still in good working order.

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

Contributors: Paul Clark, Phil Nugent

In Other Blogs: Canadian Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Many luminaries from the film blogosphere attended the Toronto International Film Festival this week. (I would have gone, but I don’t speak Canadian.) Spoutblog chatted with Paris, Not France director Adria Petty to find out the story behind those cancelled screenings. “I’ll just tell you the truth,” she said. “The truth is that we just didn’t want the film pirated. There’s a lot of people involved in the film that own it or financed it. It was in a lot of different camps and different layers. And basically, at the end of the day, instead of having the whole thing canceled or pulled because of all these greedy or annoying people, Paris and I, who wanted the film to screen at Toronto and were honored by it, we were like, look let’s just do it once in one big theater. And then we put the night vision goggles in one time––because everybody is like, who pays for the night vision?”

In this Toronto dispatch, Green Cine Daily asks the musical question: “Does postmodernism have a future?...Without a doubt, this year's grand test case for the future viability of any form of large-scale political cinema, if not for outsized American auteur cinema in general, is Steven Soderbergh's Che. Divided into two full-length films, each slightly over two hours, Che could be the ultimate sinkhole for our day, a giant leftist vacuum into which someone's money vanished without a trace. How can this film even exist, and who is its presumed audience? To Soderbergh's credit, there seems to have been little consideration of this question. I would like to be able to weigh in passionately on the debate around Che, but the sad truth is, there's little onscreen to justify passions in either direction.”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson applauds our Canadian oppressors. “One difference between Canadians and Europeans: They are not into power-tripping you at the entrance to movie theaters. I arrived too late (about ten minutes before starting time) for the one and only press/industry screening of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker yesterday…Then word came that no more seats could be found. Some of us (the Americans and Canadians) were saddened and disappointed and frustrated. Others (those with European accents, though it is possible they were Quebecois) were indignant. They waved their passes and accused the theater staff of ignoring them or cheating them in some way….Finally, a staffer had to explain: There. Were. No. More. Seats. She was not trying to cheat people out of seeing the Kathryn Bigelow movie. She was not attempting to wield arbitrary authority over a gaggle of eager festivalgoers in order to make herself feel powerful and important. She was doing her job and telling the truth: The theater was full.”

Slant supplies its own Canadian content with a look at Adoration. “A characteristically masterful welter of bad vibrations, Atom Egoyan's latest finds the director back in Canadian Traumaland after his Hollywood sojourn in Where the Truth Lies. Keyed to the characters' sense of lingering grief, the narrative unfurls as a time-hopping maze of action and consequence—its deftness and delicacy shame Arriaga's tawdry temporal gymnastics in The Burning Plain. A button-pushing essay by a high-schooler (Devon Bostick) gives the absence-riddled film its center: Turning an article about a failed terrorist plot into a faux-eulogy to his dead parents, the boy uncorks a reservoir of sorrow that brings together his uncle (a surprisingly excellent Scott Speedman), teacher (Egoyan axiom Arsinée Kanjian), and other members of the community… Moody, gliding filmmaking and ripples of quizzical humor save it from being a lugubrious game of therapeutic musical chairs.

And in List-o-Mania, PopMatters offers the Top Ten Things I Loved About TIFF 08, including the return of Debra Winger. “She was only in about four scenes of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, but in her scant screen time, she conducted a master class in scene-stealing as the mother of the title character and Anne Hathaway’s noxious Kym. Yes, it may be the ‘mother’ role, but Winger is understatedly elegant, and rock-solid. Here’s to hoping this high-profile release gains her some traction on the awards circuit, in tandem with Hathaway. It’s a small, quietly fuming turn that should be lauded for its poetic simplicity.”

Trailer Review: Rachel Getting Married

Paul Clark — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For years, Anne Hathaway has been attempting to make the transition from Disney-family princess roles to full-blown adult stardom. But despite a handful of much-appreciated topless scenes in Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, it hasn’t quite happened yet. I suppose part of the problem is that Hathaway’s roles have been less showy than her costars’, resulting in them getting the lion’s share of the attention. But this time, Hathaway’s not taking any chances, playing a recovering addict whose erratic behavior throws something of a monkey wrench into the wedding of her sister. However, in spite of this quirky setup, I’ve got high hopes for Rachel Getting Married, with director Jonathan Demme making a long-overdue return to off-kilter comedy, and the presence of the sorely-missed Debra Winger in the pivotal role of Hathaway’s tough-love mom, a part she ought to turn into something more than a long-suffering cliché. Plus it’s in the Competition lineup at Venice, which is enough of an endorsement for me.

Hathaway Hotness, Rourke Smackdowns Head Venice Comp Lineup

Paul Clark — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Today brought the announcement of the Competition lineup for next month’s 65th annual Venice International Film Festival. Among the highest-profile American titles in the lineup was the upcoming Jonathan Demme film, Rachel Getting Married (starring the lovely Anne Hathaway, pictured at right) and the sorely-missed Debra Winger. Another intriguing title is The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Mickey Rourke, no doubt eager to try out a new sport after his abortive boxing career. Of course, if you’re looking for something really great, a solid bet would be the latest film by animation master Hayao Miyazaki, entitled Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea, also in Competition.

Other filmmakers of note in Competition include: Takeshi Kitano (Achilles and the Tortoise), Barbet Schroeder (Inju, la Bete dans l’ombre), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Mamoru Oshii (The Sky Crawlers), Werner Schroeter (Nuit de Chien), and Ferzan Oztepek (Un giorno perfetto). Then there’s the directorial debut of Babel screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, entitled The Burning Plain. Expect a trio of interlocking stores and plenty of tortured, writerly multi-culti coincidence.

Here’s the full Competition slate:

Darren Aronofsky- The Wrestler
Guillermo Arriaga- The Burning Plain
Pupi Avati- Il papà di Giovanna
Marco Bechis- BirdWatchers
Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic- L’Autre
Kathryn Bigelow- Hurt Locker
Pappi Corsicato- Il seme della discordia
Jonathan Demme- Rachel Getting Married
Haile Gerima- Teza
Aleksey German Jr.- Bumažnyj soldat (Paper Soldier)
Semih Kaplanoglu- Süt
Takeshi Kitano- Akires to kame (Achilles and the Tortoise)
Hayao Miyazaki- Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea)
Amir Naderi- Vegas: Based on a True Story
Mamoru Oshii- The Sky Crawlers
Ferzan Özpetek- Un giorno perfetto
Christian Petzold- Jerichow
Barbet Schroeder- Inju, la Bête dans l’ombre
Werner Schroeter- Nuit de chien
Tariq Teguia- Gabbla (Inland)
YU Lik-wai- Dangkou (Plastic City)

Strangely enough, this year’s Out of Competition selections are more impressive-looking overall than the titles that are actually competing. Playing outside of competition are new films from the likes of Abbas Kiarostami (Shirin, starring Juliette Binoche), Claire Denis (35 Rhums), Agnes Varda (Les Plages d’Agnes), a new version of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La Rabbia, and short films by Manoel de Oliveira (Do Visivel ao Invisivel) and Jia Zhang-ke (Cry Me a River). Also, there’s a little movie called Burn After Reading by a pair of filmmaking brothers. Didn’t catch their names, I’m afraid.

The 65th Annual Venice International Film Festival runs from August 27 through September 6. Click here for more information.

Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now that we’re all feeling nice and empowered from our Top Ten List of films with strong female characters and themes, here’s the other side of the coin: nine movies we’re guessing you won’t find on Gloria Steinem’s Netflix queue (unless she’s researching a new book on movies that didn’t exactly do wonders for the feminist movement).

(Oh, and while we're on the subject, a special P.S. to Katherine Heigl: Really? Knocked Up is more sexist than 27 Dresses? That's a fascinating theory. Please, tell me more!)

PRETTY WOMAN (1990)

Although she later improved her girl power street credit with her Academy Award-winning turn as an indomitable single mother in Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts’ breakthrough role was about as healthy (and irresistible) as a deep fried bacon Twinkie for the mobs of women (and men) who made it a blockbuster hit. I mean, I’m a dude and I certainly have my issues with some of the more strident tenets of feminism, but even I was offended by the film’s basic premise about the whore-with-the-heart-of-gold who charms a rich Prince Charming with her sparkling personality (and fellatio skills) to the point where he decides to keep her for himself, making her dreams come true by paying for all the overpriced jewels and fashion she could possibly want. Oh, and he goes down on her on a Steinway...the movie’s one true nod to progressive gender relations. This movie is offensive on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. The blatant portrayal of women as whores who only get what they want by attracting successful men? The offensiveness of Jason Alexander’s loathsome chauvinist pig character, a personification of the film’s equal opportunity anti-male stereotyping (unattractive men are icky slobs and probably rapists, whereas good looking men are more trustworthy and morally superior)? The ridiculous depiction of prostitution as an Outward Bound-style empowerment program (complete with Laura San Giacomo’s mother hen prostitute telling a fledgling whore at the end of the movie that she expects big things from her, y'know, on par with Roberts’ home run of man-bagging)? Oh, sure...it’s just a movie, and an insidiously charming one at that, and maybe I’m reading too much into it and getting all het up for no reason...yet, at the same time, it’s also worth noting that many of the girls who grew up watching Pretty Woman (not to mention the film’s original audience) now enjoy (and sometimes embody) the film’s sex-for-crass-materialism ethos in pervasive cultural incarnations from Paris Hilton and The Real World to just about every show on the E! network.

FATAL ATTRACTION (1987)

One of the most polarizing blockbuster hits of the '80s, Fatal Attraction presents us with Glenn Close as the image of the sexy, successful unmarried career woman and turns her into what the movie confidently assumes is every man's nightmare: the one night stand who won't go away. Seen alone in her apartment at night, she's not really confident at all: she's a lonely neurotic wreck -- this is what being without a family, or at least a man, presumably does to a woman, what all career women are really like underneath. Then, after the married guy (Michael Douglas) who thought they were both just having a little fling stops putting up with her, she turns into an avenging harpy, and in the process she says all the things that women who are sick of being badly used and treated as objects have said. They don't apply to the situation, and you may think the fact that she thinks they do shows how sick she is, but given that this is the era of Reagan, AIDS, the "new chastity" and the anti-feminist backlash, a lot of people in the audience thought the fact this fruitcake was saying them proved what she was saying must be crazy in any instance. The movie isn't exactly misogynist; its real cunning is the way it uses the recently politicized concept of "family" to justify its turning Close into a she-devil while advocating the use of violence or whatever else it takes to ward off attacks by outsiders who try to damage the holy unit of family. As everyone knows, the movie originally ended with Close committing suicide and framing Douglas for her murder, an ending that was actually more plausible in keeping with the character's psychology, and one that pissed off test audiences who were denied the revenge-killing catharsis they'd been made to expect. The movie was probably always fated to end with Close getting it, but the stroke of genius was in putting the gun in the hand of Douglas's wife (Anne Archer) and making it a battle between the good wife and the hussy, a choice that made some women in the audience cheer louder than the men. The family that slays together...

LEGAL EAGLES (1986)

Everything about this slapped-together, thoughtlessly conceived comedy-thriller, starring Robert Redford and Debra Winger as dueling lawyers and Darryl Hannah as a pair of frosted lips sitting atop mile-high legs, is a testament to the hackish instincts of the director, Ivan Reitman, and the screenwriting team, Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. (whose other collaborations include Top Gun, The Secret of My Success, and Anaconda). It's the kind of movie that seems to have been made by people who were in a rush to get the shoot completed because they couldn't wait to show up at the red carpet premiere, the kind of movie where less important things like telling a story or entertaining an audience never crossed anyone's mind. About the only thing of note about it is the example it provides of just how much damage simple hackishness can do, because Legal Eagles also wasted the time and bent the brain of one of the white-hot talents of the '80s, Debra Winger, at just the point in her career where she was lined up on the runway and poised for full takeoff. Her role here -- a foil to Redford and, ultimately, a damsel in distress -- is so stupidly written that it's an insult, and she's the only person in the large, talented cast who still hadn't had the idealism beaten out of her to such a degree that she knew enough to just go through the motions and collect her check. You can see her trying to bring some kind of truth to what she's doing, and you can see how unhappy she is that she isn't succeeding, and her unhappiness is contagious. The movie is said to have done Winger extended career damage, partly because it soured her on the movie business but also because the industry was appalled that she was so impolite as to complain about the director in interviews. Anywhere but in Hollywood, expressing confidence in Ivan Reitman as a director would be grounds for having a judge take away your power of attorney.

FLASHDANCE (1983)

This MTV-styled sleazefest was bad for women, sweatshirts, steelworkers, strip clubs, movies, lobster dinners, pit bulls, warehouse lofts, Top 40 radio, and Jennifer Beals' dance double. (It was also a little rough on Maureen Marder, the real-life stripper-welder who "inspired" the screenplay outline, and who was persuaded to sign away the movie rights to her life story for a flat payment of $2300. After the movie grossed in excess of $150 million, Paramount, in an industry that routinely writes checks to squelch nuisance suits, actually let Marder drag them in front of a judge after she came around begging for more money, secure in the knowledge that the agreement would hold up in court. Then, in an amazing act of chutzpah, the movie studio actually sued over a Jennifer Lopez video that was painstakingly designed as a tribute to the movie. Not that people shouldn't be penalized somehow for paying tribute to Flashdance.) It makes all the horrible sense in the world that, for this "inspirational" story of a girl who doesn't give up her dream to dance, the director Adrian Lyne cast an unknown who couldn't dance (but who had the "look") and then tried to suppress the information that her dancing was performed by a double, Marine Jahan, whom he subsequently threatened to punish for daring to publicly take credit for her own work in the movie. (He may have been successful in this: Jahan only appeared in one other movie, 1984's Streets of Fire.) Given the flashy fast-cut style that Lyne developed (with his work in TV commercials before transposing it to movies), this could just as well have been the story of a carefully lit can of peas that never gave up its dream to be a zucchini. Not trying to give you any ideas, Adrian.

MONA LISA SMILE (2003)

The thing that makes Mona Lisa Smile – the story of a bohemian art history teacher who comes to shake things up at the hyper-conservative cartoon of an East Coast university in the stodgy 1950s – so incredibly frustrating, and qualifies it for inclusion in our list of movies that are particularly disempowering to women, is that it actually thinks it’s a feminist movie. Set at a version of Wellesley University so reactionary that the board of chancellors might as well have Snidely Whiplash mustaches, the movie asks us to believe that Julia Roberts’ character has come to show young women the possibility of more than just a perfunctory education to put some polish on their cocktail party chatter before settling down into marriage, but it subverts itself at every turn, to such a degree that it actually comes across as more sexist that the milieu it rails against. Roberts shows her students the liberation possible through art – but never manages to mention any female artists. Roberts teaches her young charges that there’s more to life than being someone’s wife – but all of the characters are essentially defined by their relationship to men. Roberts encourages her students not to let themselves be limited by the expectations of others – but Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character is clearly condemned in the movie for her loose sexual morals, and in one of the movie’s ugliest scenes, Julia Stiles’ character excoriates an ashamed Roberts for expecting her to choose a career over marriage. When it comes to defining women by their power and potential, Mona Lisa Smile is a path to hell that’s paved with good intentions.

Click here for Part Two of Girl DisemPowering

Click here for Part One and Part Two of Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Summer of ’78: “Thank God It’s Friday”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Because I have lost my mind, I am launching yet another new Screengrab feature today, this one called – as you may have gathered – “Summer of ’78.” The premise is simple: each week this summer we will jump back in time 30 years to check out a flick that was new and exciting in theaters that week in 1978. This isn’t necessarily about the biggest hits or biggest bombs, or the best or worst movies; it’s more about examining what was considered suitable summer entertainment then and how it compares to today’s blockbuster fare. I’m sure we’ll all learn something, right? Hello? Is this thing on?

What better way to kick off the series than with the most beloved disco comedy ever made, with the possible exceptions of Can’t Stop the Music and Summer of Sam?

Thank God It’s Friday

Release Date: May 19, 1978

Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Terri Nunn, Chick Vennera, Donna Summer, Debra Winger and The Commodores

The Buzz: Saturday Night Fever was a huge hit. Add some laughs, substitute Jeff Goldblum for John Travolta, and what could go wrong?

Keywords: Discotheque, Gorilla Suit, Pinball, Leather, Dance Contest

The Plot: The hard-working stiffs of Los Angeles are living for Friday night, when they can finally cut loose on the dance floor of the Zoo, the hottest disco in town. DJ Bobby Speed has promised a live appearance by the Commodores in time for the big dance contest, but their instruments and equipment are with roadie Floyd, who keeps getting pulled over by the cops. Aspiring singer Nicole (Summer) just wants a chance to show off her pipes. Zoo owner Tony Di Marco (Goldblum) is a horndog trying to lure a married woman into the sack on her fifth anniversary. The rest of the Zoo is filled with lonely people in polyester looking for love or just looking to score.

The Test of Time: The ensemble cast, up-all-night party movie is one of my favorite genres, but Thank God It’s Friday is a pretty weak example. It plays like an extended episode of some 70s sitcom you’d forgotten about, set to a monotonous dance beat. It’s the most whitebread depiction of the disco craze imaginable; the only black people in the joint are the entertainment, and there’s virtually no gay presence at all aside from one mild joke and the recurring sight gag of a cross-dresser shaving his chest. If this movie were the only surviving artifact of the era, you’d have to assume disco was a predominantly Jewish phenomenon. The music is generally lame soundtrack album filler, aside from “Brick House” and the Donna Summer showstopper “Last Dance” (the reason you can accurately call Thank God It’s Friday an Academy Award winner). The cast is forgettable and forgotten, except for Goldblum and one girl who caught my attention by actually resembling a flesh-and-blood human being. Checking the credits later, it turned out she was Debra Winger. I wonder what ever happened to her?

Quotable Quote: “You know what this place reminds me of? Disneyland with tits!”

2008 Equivalent: If we’re talking dance-offs, the recent Step Up 2 The Streets fits the bill. If the question is which summer movie will look the most dated in 30 years, it has to be Speed Racer, right?