The Screengrab : elmore leonard

That Guy! John Glover

Phil Nugent — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

In the late 1970s, in a string of films of wildly varying quality and interest (including Annie Hall, Julia, the Farrah Fawcett vehicle Somebody Killed Her Husband, and Jonathan Demme's Last Embrace and Melvin and Howard), John Glover established himself as a real one-scene wonder, an eccentric, highly skilled actor who was able to take a very brief amount of screen time and use it to make as strong an impression as anyone else in the movie. He was much in demand in the 1980s and into the '90s, doing a lot of work in a lot of different shades and flavors, ranging from a man trying to show the sick hero (Aidan Quinn) of the 1985 TV movie An Early Frost who to die, of AIDS, with dignity, to a doctor who sues his hospital to firing him for having a disfiguring disease on an episode of L.A. Law to the pitchman for a lethal car-protection device in a parody commercial that opened Robocop 2. Yet his combination of brazen smarts and the energy level of an electrified fence seemed to make him especially prone to being cast in villain roles, culminating in his playing the devil himself in the short-lived cult TV series Brimstone. By then, he had also given ample evidence of having the most versatile hair in the history of acting.

In recent years, Glover has been of a presence in TV and on stage than in movies; he may actually be best known to young'uns as Lex Luthor's father on Smallville, a role he played for seven seasons before the character kicked off. Since then, he's been seen as Ron Rifkin's boyfriend on Brothers and Sisters and as Zachary Qunito's father on Heroes. He's currently on Broadway, playing Lucky in a highly praised production of Waiting for Godot alongside Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, and, as Pozzo, John Goodman--Those Guys! of much repute, all.

Where to see John Glover at his best:

52 PICK-UP (1986): This Elmore Leonard adaptation, directed by John Frankenheimer, suffers from an equilibrium problem: the villains are so much more entertaining than the people they're tormenting that it keeps throwing the picture off balance. But of all the performances that inspired one critic to proclaim Glover "the prime rotter of the '80s"--including his scheming stepdaddy in Masquerade (1988) and a smiling hatchet man out for Bill Murray's job in Scrooged (1988)--this is the most flamboyantly show-stopping. His slimy mastermind and amateur filmmaker Alan Raimy is a trained bookkeeper who "found better ways of making money; these include blackmailing Roy Scheider for having slept with a lissome young thing, and then, when that doesn't pan out, blackmailing him after framing him for the lissome young thing's murder. (It goes without saying that he had filmed both the sex and violence, for maximum persuasiveness.) One reason this performance stands out in the Glover rogue's gallery is that he has a first-rate partner in another That Guy!, Clarence Williams III. While Glover, lean and gaunt, dances in place while working his motor mouth, Williams, huge and near-mute, looms menacingly over those he's trying to impress while they wonder if the color of his eyes exists in nature. In his own prize scene, Williams tortures his girlfriend (Vanity) to find out if she's sold them out to Schedier, and, after she squeals that she would never dream of doing such a thing, sits up, murmurs, "I believe you," and then, after pausing and gazing into the nether distance, laments his great character failing: "But I believe everybody!"

GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990): Joe Dante's sequel to the 1984 "E.T. Goes Nutzoid"-genetic freak of a summer movie came out right about the time that Glover started confessing to interviewers that he'd like a crack at parts that were less villainous and funnier. He plays Daniel Clamp, a cartoon of Donald Trump, back in the days when Trump was a high-end cheeseball celebrity (Page Six, Spy magazine, Doonesbury) and not just a low-end cheeseball who plays a tycoon on reality TV. The role is still kind of villainous, but it's mostly a comic opportunity, and Glover delivers a sophisticated-sophomoric performance that meshes will with the general outlines of a film that's conceived as a feature-length, (mostly) live-action salute to master Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones. This was especially impressive at the time, when Glover could also be seen starring in a production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People that Jack O'Brien directed for public television, which really ought to be available on DVD.

LOVE! VALOR! COMPASSION! (1997): Terrence McNally's highly acclaimed 1994 play, which follows the lives of a group of gay male friends over the course of three holiday-weekend getaways, lost something in the transition to this stiff movie version, but at least it gave Glover, a member of the original Broadway cast, a chance to preserve his dual performance. He plays a pair of English twin brothers: John Jeckyll, a sour, dyspeptic put-down artist, and James, who is beloved by all for his sweet disposition and generous nature. (Dr. Jeckyll and ... get it?) Glover shows his stature here partly by the traps he evades: he plays both brothers (the nicer of whom is dying of AIDS) as individuals and not as conceits made flesh, and does it so well that, by the end, it may be John, the acidic brother who knows that no one will ever love him as easily as everyone loves his twin, to whom your heart goes out.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Online: Shooting Off "Sparks"

Phil Nugent — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Like every successful and talented young actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt wants to direct. He recently completed his first effort, a short film called Sparks starring Carla Gugino, Eric Stoltz, and Xander Berkeley, which Gordon-Levitt also produced and adapted from an Elmore Leonard story. Then, he invited his members of his on-line community to improve on the poster art. For five years, Gordon-Leavitt has been tinkering with his own web site, hitRECORD.org, which, as Jason Guerrasio explains in Filmmaker magazine, is conceived as "a site where artists and filmmakers can go to post their work and then collaborate with a community of users who can contribute to the work by adding their own tweaks, or as Gordon-Levitt puts it, remixing."

"This is my whole take on the Internet creative culture," Gordon-Levitt says, stressing that anything goes so long as people's users' attitudes towards others' work is encouraging rather than snarky. "Why would you take time out to be negative? Instead of posting something that’s negative I’d rather move on and look for something good. Everyone understands this and has built a positive community." He continues: "What is good about hitRECord is that you don’t have to confront that blank page. I see what’s getting a lot of hearts (the way works are rated on the site), I add something to it and reupload it. The idea is if lots of people do that we’ll get a collective refining of our records. It’s not about an individual author; it’s the desires of what I hope will be hundreds of refinements."

Gordon-Levitt, who labors at the site under the username "RegularJOE" ("The old media tends to call me Joseph Gordon-Levitt, that being my name and all."), created the site with his brother, "Burning" Dan, and now hopes "to take the site to the next level by making more user-friendly features and building awareness of the site’s existence. Currently Gordon-Levitt says there are about five to 10 dedicated registered users who put up their work or add their talents to others. But he’s shocked there are even that many, as up until now the site has only been a hobby of his." Hobby or not, he seems to feel that hitRECORD has the potential to be the vanguard of something. "The truth is the traditional forms of entertainment are outdated. This is how I would like to do my work in front of and behind the camera in the future. Soon the Internet is going to be the only platform.

Trailer Review: Killshot

Paul Clark — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Looking at the IMDb page for Killshot, I can’t help but be a little confused about the parties involved. Sure, I can understand Quentin Tarantino exec-producing an Elmore Leonard adaptation. But somewhat more unexpected is that the director and screenwriter of note on the film have, between then, been responsible for Shakespeare in Love, Wings of the Dove, Proof, and The Four Feathers- in other words, not exactly Hollywood’s reigning kings of taut suspense. But looking at the “trivia” page, it all begins to make sense- Killshot is a former Miramax film, and director John Madden and writer Hossein Amini were Miramax favorites back when the film was shot in 2005. Hell, even the 3 1/2-year delay makes sense considering who ponied up the dough, although the question remains of why anyone would actually sit on a movie for that long. Were they waiting for one of the lead actors to become bankable? Tom Jane’s leading-man career didn’t quite pan out, and Diane Lane isn’t really able to open a movie, so maybe MGM (the new distributor) figures that Mickey Rourke’s Wrestler buzz will boost the box office enough to make it worth releasing. Or perhaps we’ve got a Midnight Meat Train situation here, with MGM contractually bound to give this a theatrical release. Yes, but will it be any good? On the basis of the trailer, it looks pretty uninspired, and is the sort of boilerplate trailer I practically forget while I’m watching. Which probably explains why I devoted so much time to the production history- after all, I had to write about something, didn’t I?

Take Five: Arizona

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:15:00 GMT

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer gets its limited-release debut this Friday, after two years of lingering on the festival circuit without a distributor. Although some critics have praised its good-natured look at sexuality and overall sunny demeanor, it's likely that the real reason Georgina Riedel's feature-length debut is finally seeing the light of day is the newfound TV stardom of its lead actress, America Ferrara. Still, the reason I want to see it is simple: it's set in Arizona. I was born and raised in Phoenix, at a time when everyone from there was from somewhere else, and while I don't really miss the place, I still have that hokey boosterism that makes me raise an eyebrow whenever I hear a movie or television show is set there or filming there. During the early days of Hollywood, the movie business was obsessed with the 48th state -- largely because it had only recently become a state. It was the last of the frontier, the final remnant of the proud plains and deserts of the New West, and while the vast majority of the western shoot-'em-ups set in Arizona were really made on a back lot five blocks from La Cienega Boulevard, there's still plenty of movies out there claiming Arizonan provenance. As the state has morphed into Southern California's bedroom annex, with all the strip malls and chain stores that implies, there's continued to be a few standout films that use the Grand Canyon State as their setting; here's five of them.

IN OLD ARIZONA (1929)

The filming of this early classic western didn't get within 300 miles of Arizona, but like a lot of early cowboy pictures, it's set there. In Old Arizona has a lot of the corny qualities that modern audiences associate with this era of filmmaking, but it's worth seeing -- and historically significant -- for a number of reasons. The first full-length talkie ever released by 20th Century Fox, it was also the first talking picture to be filmed outdoors. Director Raoul Walsh was set to play the lead himself, but a car accident robbed him of the chance, and cost him an eye, leading to the eyepatch that became his tradmark in later years; his replacement was Warner Baxter, who won only the second Best Actor Oscar in history for his performance as the Cisco Kid. Finally, the movie has a memorable twist ending that sets it apart -- courtesy of the original story, by O. Henry.

3:10 TO YUMA (1957)

We'd love to include the remake here, but it was filmed entirely in New Mexico, Arizona's glory-hogging next door neighbor. But the original is just as good in many ways; it's based on the same wildly popular pulp novella (by a young Elmore Leonard!) that spawned the reboot 50 years later, and the overall look, feel, and plot are the same. There's also a handful of swell performances, especially by leads Van Heflin and Glenn Ford, both playing against type. Often compared to its superior contemporary High Noon, 3:10 to Yuma simply isn't in that class, but it's still a tight, claustrophobic little western thriller, worth seeing until it sort of falls apart at the end. It's also about all the big-screen fame that Yuma, AZ -- a dodgy little town on the California border, best known for its ungodly temperatures in the summer -- would ever get.

PSYCHO (1960)

Very little of Alfred Hitchcock's slasher masterpiece was actually filmed in Phoenix, Arizona -- mostly just a few establishing shots and street scenes. But for some moviegoers, seeing the name of the town at the tail end of the movie's memorable opening credits would be their first recognizable experience of Arizona even existing outside of old-time westerns, and their first clue that the state capitol was actually a bustling modern city, not a frontier outpost constantly besieged by bands of Apache. (Even in the '70s, when I was growing up, people from out of state would ask me if living in Phoenix was like growing up in a Western.) The action shifts pretty early on to California, the home of the Bates Motel, but really, I just included it on this list to test my theory that no matter what 'best movie featuring _____' theme you come up with, you can fit Psycho into it.

REAL LIFE (1979)

Albert Brooks' first full-length film as a director is absolutely fantastic. It establishes his winning comedic persona as a shallow, self-centered Hollywood phony; it satirizes reality television a good twenty years before anyone else was doing it; it features one of Charles Grodin's finest big-screen performances, and a hilarious relief role for That Guy! J.A. Preston; and it's probably the funniest and most successful film that Brooks ever did. But for me, there was an extra kick: it was set, and partially filmed, in my hometown of Phoenix, and it's the very first time I can consciously remember seeing places in a movie that I'd actually been to in real life. When I first saw, at age 10, local newscaster Carlos Jurado removed from my living room TV and being featured on the silver screen, I gained an understanding of the power of movies I'd never really had before.

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

Although the entirety of the Coen Brothers' first comic masterpiece was filmed in various locations around central Arizona, you wouldn't know it from the script. The place names are gibberish, the filming locations don't synch up with the places mentioned on screen, and the entire movie seems set less in any recognizable version of the Grand Canyon State than it is in some kind of rural fantasia that's half Wild West and half Appalachian hillbilly country. Roger Ebert actually got really bent out of shape about this, giving the film a disapproving review because of the ridiculous quasi-southern accents everyone sported and the nebulous redneck paradise it seemed to be set in, but Rog was really missing the point. I still lived in Arizona when this came out, and everyone I knew there loved it; it's not like we were expecting social realism out of the thing. The Coens are perfectly capable of verisimilitude when they want to be (see Fargo and The Big Lebowski for examples); here, Arizona was just a hook on which to hang the film's lunatic comedic sensibilities, with no more need for accuracy than Freedonia in Duck Soup.

That Guy!: Delroy Lindo

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:45:00 GMT

All throughout Black History Month in February, the Screengrab's That Guy! feature will be taking a look at some of Hollywood's finest African-American character actors. Last week we focused on Ving Rhames, and this week, we're taking a look at the man recently voted Most Likely To Be Mistaken For Ving Rhames: Delroy Lindo. Born in London to a family of Jamaican ancestry, Lindo's facial similarities to Rhames, along with his powerful physique and tendency to portray gangsters, drug dealers and other low-lifes, has often led to confusion between the two. But while Rhames' on-screen style is smooth, calculating and understated, Lindo tends towards the edgy, the explosive, the half-mad. After making his first major film (More American Graffiti) in 1979, Delroy Lindo didn't make another film for a decade, preferring to focus on the stage roles to which he still occasionally returns; he earned widespread praise (and Tony nominations) for his work in Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. When he finally returned to the big screen, he found his biggest proponent in America's most prominent black director: Spike Lee cast him in a number of memorable roles, and even handed him the role of family man Woody Carmichael in Crooklyn — a thinly veiled portrait of Lee's own father. Despite his frequent portrayal of criminal thugs, Lindo imbues even his most brutal characters with a rind of humanity, and has equally excelled at playing patriarchs, professionals, and even the odd romantic lead. One of his least-appreciated performances was a natural and charismatic turn as legendary Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige in the TV movie Soul of the Game; the NAACP, at least, liked him enough to hand him an Image Award for the film. Lindo's film career has been quiet of late; after landing his first major television role (aside from an enjoyable performance as a frustrated social worker in the "Brawl in the Family" episode of The Simpsons) in the short-lived thriller Kidnapped, he's preferred to focus exclusively on his work in the theatre, appearing in major roles in London and on Broadway and even in Toronto, where he lived for some time. However, at 55 years old, Lindo is at precisely the age when immense opportunities can open up for character actors of his skill and demeanor. We'd hate to think that he'll make us wait another ten years before his next big-screen appearance.

Where to see Delroy Lindo at his best:

MALCOLM X (1992)

Delroy Lindo's first major film appearance after his decade-long exile from motion pictures was Spike Lee's epic biography of the black nationalist leader Malcolm X. His turn as West Indian Archie, the Boston numbers runner with the photographic memory for whom young Malcolm worked, was by turns fearsome and pathetic, perfectly conveying the sense of loss and rage that Malcolm felt at the degradation of blacks in America. It's one of the most memorable performances in a movie full of them, and it served to make Lindo's reputation as a character to watch out for.

CLOCKERS (1995)

Soon after casting Lindo in Crooklyn, Spike Lee gave Delroy Lindo his third choice role in a row as the sinister drug lord Rodney Little. Although the movie has since become notable as the big-screen debut of Mekhi Phifer, it's Lindo who steals the show as Rodney: as is typical of his portrayal of criminals and undesirables, he charges the role with unmistakable emotion and humanity, especially in the scenes where he innocently plays with model trains after ordering the death of his subordinates. One of Lee's most underrated movies, Clockers is anchored by Lindo's role in a story that strongly presages the urban realism of The Wire.

GET SHORTY (1996)

The second installment of John Travolta's umpteenth career comeback was this slight but enjoyable Barry Sonnenfeld adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel. While Travolta's Chili Palmer is the star of the show, it's Delroy Lindo as the L.A. gangster Bo "The Cat" Catlett who gets most of the movie's best lines. Diverging from his usual mode of instilling his thugs with a redeeming sliver of decency or vulnerability, here Lindo goes for flat-out humor, and proves himself to be a rather able screen comedian. Even when he doesn't have the great one-liners — which isn't often — his ability to mix nervousness, intimidation and exasperation carry the laughs.

Oscar Shorts, Part 1: Best Live-Action Short Film

Paul Clark — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

For years, the Academy Awards for Best Live-Action and Best Animated Short Film have been lost in the Oscar-night shuffle. Short films have fallen on hard times of late, and consequently most Oscar-viewers take the short film awards as an excuse to make a trip to the kitchen or the bathroom. Thank goodness for Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International, who in recent years have started distributing the Oscar-nominated short films as part of traveling programs in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. By making the films available to theatrical audiences, they're restoring some of the luster to these oft-overlooked categories. At the very least, they've allowed us to care about a race that's at least as interesting as some of the bigger-ticket categories.

This year's five nominees for Best Live-Action Short Film encompass a variety of genres and styles. The most expansive of the shorts, The Tonto Woman is set in the old West, and is based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. It tells the story of a cattle rustler who falls in love with a woman who's been kept in isolation after over a decade spent as the prisoner of the Mojave tribe. Working with a limited budget, directors Daniel Barber and Matthew Brown create a reasonably convincing version of the West, but some of the performances are lacking, and the pacing seems off. Still, Leonard's story is effective, and the film's final line is ideal, although it might've been even more affecting had the story not taken place in flashback.

The biggest crowd-pleaser of the bunch is Tanghi Argentini, a Belgian short about a middle-aged man who needs to learn the tango in two weeks to impress a girl he's met on the Internet. The film falls squarely into the ever-growing subgenre of dancing-salaryman movies (e.g. Shall We Dance?, both versions), and directors Guido Thys and Anja Daelemans do little to distinguish this from its predecessors. That said, the film has a certain amount of charm, especially when the protagonist's goals become clear.

Easily the least of the five shorts, Le Mozart des Pickpockets is a French entry about two down-on-their-luck Parisian criminals who adopt a homeless, deaf boy only to discover that he has a natural talent for picking pockets. The plot might lead one to believe that the film is a cutesy-poo version of a Dardenne brothers film, but the story goes down relatively well. Where the film falls short is by miscalculating what makes the story interesting — by focusing too much on the sadsack adults and not enough on the enigma of the boy, much of the fascination is lost. As a result, the film's punchline feels misguided, and the consequences don't make much impact.

With their abbreviated running times, short films can work in unique ways that aren't shared by feature-length movies. While some filmmakers tell smaller-scale stories, others provide a glimpse into people's lives, unencumbered by the demands of conventional feature-film storytelling. So it is with the Danish film At Night, the story of three women in a hospital's cancer ward. Each woman is a terminal case, and rather than sending them off on inspiring globetrotting adventures (Bucket List-style), At Night simply immerses us in their routines — the long days, the visits from doctors and nurses, the families who come to see many of them, and the long nights during which they form a bond. Produced by Lars Von Trier's Zentropa Entertainment, Christian E. Christensen's and Louise Vesth's film is the most downbeat of the bunch, but it's also truer to the realities of terminal disease than almost all Hollywood portrayals of the subject.

But the best of the nominees is Andrea Jublin's Il Supplente (The Substitute), which tells the story of a substitute teacher who shows up in class one day and promptly begins to raise hell. The opening half of the film goes on a bit too long, but it's bracing in its anarchy, as the substitute cuts the teacher's pet down to size, taunts a fat kid by stealing his prized autographed soccer ball, and more. But where the film really takes off is the second half, when the truth comes out about the substitute teacher. I wouldn't dream of giving it away, except to say that the film's finale is flat-out perfect, not least because it's been set up so well. Most of the other nominated films in the category might have worked as literature or theatre, but Il Supplente is unimaginable in any other form, and Jublin never steps wrong in making it completely cinematic. It's not perfect, but it's the winner in the bunch.

That Guy!: Ving Rhames

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:00:00 GMT

That Guy!'s salute to Black History Month continues with a look at one of our favorite contemporary African-American character actors, Ving Rhames. A powerfully built six-footer with an intimidating mein and a penchant for playing bruisers and bad-asses, Rhames is in fact one of Hollywood's most notorious nice guys, a deeply spiritual and profoundly humanitarian person with a reputation in America's most backstabbing town for always being the touch for someone in need. Born with the substantially less intimidating Christian name of "Irving" in 1959, Rhames picked up his stage name not from the mean streets of his native Harlem, but from the decidedly non-superfly Stanley Tucci, a classmate of his at SUNY-Purchase. After formative experiences at the High School of Performing Arts and on Broadway, he launched a successful film career in the mid-1990s and has gone on to become something of a go-to guy for casting directors looking for a deft blend of intimidation and intelligence. (Which is not to say that his film career is nothing but bluster: he not only played a drag queen in a TV movie entitled Holiday Heart, but recently appeared in the excrable I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, singing "I'm Every Woman" while naked in a locker room full of men.)

In addition to his cinematic accomplishments, Rhames was the subject of a bizarre coincidence that itself could form the basis of a too-strange-to-be-true docudrama: while filming The Saint of Fort Washington, he encountered a homeless veteran on the streets of New York who, it would later become clear, was his own older brother, estranged from the family since his return from Vietnam almost twenty years before. Ving's basso profundo voice, distinctive look, fearsome demeanor and and muscular frame have made him a natural for portraying boxers, and his next major project, due to release later this year, is Phantom Punch, in which he plays the inimitable Sonny Liston. But his most memorable boxing role to date was when he brilliantly assayed Don King in the HBO movie Only in America. He won a Golden Globe for the performance, which he immediately turned over to his acting idol, Jack Lemmon — a lovely gesture that nonetheless inspired a few wags (notably The Boondocks' Aaron McGruder) to note that blacks so rarely win major acting awards that they can scarcely afford to give them away so cavalierly.

Where to see Ving Rhames at his best:

PATTY HEARST (1988)

Made before he hit it big in Hollywood, Patty Hearst is nonetheless one of Ving Rhames' most electrifying performances. Working from an underappreciated Paul Schrader script, Rhames takes on the thorny role of Symbionese Liberation Army leader Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze, and plays it so close to over-the-top that it almost slides into hysteria — but at critical moments, he pulls back and controls his performance into a convincing portrayal of self-involved madness. The movie itself is also a quite worthwhile project that too few people have bothered to see, but Rhames' acting is a particular standout, and a sign of things to come.

PULP FICTION (1994)

Quentin Tarantino's stylized, pop-obsessive, achronological masterpiece seemed to come out of nowhere and nearly singlehandedly invent a whole new language of filmmaking. It created a directorial legend, rescued a handful of careers and started a few more — among them, that of Ving Rhames, who plays the role of the enigmatic gang boss Marsellus Wallace. It's a terrific performance, and best of all, it's in service of a character that develops in unexpected ways and shows surprising depths. It didn't make Rhames a household name, but it did make him an instantly recognizable property in ever-fickle Hollywood, and he made the most of it.

OUT OF SIGHT (1998)

His appearances in the Mission: Impossible movies got him more money and more attention, but Ving Rhames' best role at the tail end of the 1990s was in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight. One of the director's best (and least-appreciated) films, its Elmore Leonard script relies on moments of character and telling dialogue to carry it rather than big plot twists, and Rhames understands that perfectly in the understated role of Buddy Bragg. Cast against type (most people would have predicted him to get the role that eventually went to Don Cheadle), Rhames handles his quiet, solid role to near-perfection, surrounded by a top-notch cast of outstanding actors.

DVD Digest for February 12, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, one of 2007's best films comes to DVD, and a master's musicals get the box-set treatment.

DVD of the Week: Most of the most beloved films of Ernst Lubitsch's career come from its final years, when the Lubitsch touch had already become well-established. But it's easy to forget that the master had already had a fruitful career long before Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. With the films included in this box set, Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to integrate song and narrative after the advent of talkies. But this would mean little today if the films themselves didn't hold up, and they do, with all of Lubitsch's trademark charm and Pre-Code sophistication. Eclipse has given their typical treatment (no extras, but lovely transfers) to the films The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, One Hour With You, and The Smiling Lieutenant, which boast some of the era's quintessential stars — Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, and Jeannette MacDonald. As always, Eclipse and parent company Criterion succeed in filling in another hole in cinema history.

Incidentally, today is my birthday, so if anyone out there is looking for a suitable gift, you could do a whole lot worse than this.

A bumper crop of more recent films being released on DVD this week, including: Ben Affleck's surprisingly great Gone Baby Gone (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); James Gray's searing crime drama We Own the Night; Becoming Jane (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray), the second Austen-themed dramedy in as many weeks; John Cusack in The Martian Child (New Line); No Reservations (Warner, also Blu-Ray), the Catherine Zeta-Jones-starring remake of 2001's Mostly Martha; Tyler Perry's latest hit, Why Did I Get Married? (Lionsgate); the Apollo-mission documentary In the Shadow of the Moon (ThinkFilm); and John Turturro's polarizing star-studded quasi-musical, Romance and Cigarettes (Sony). In addition, this week finally sees the DVD release of Amy Heckerling's long-delayed I Could Never Be Your Woman (Genius Entertainment), starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Atonement Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. If nothing else, now we can see what all the fuss was about.

Back to classics, this week also brings Sony's The Stanley Kramer Film Collection, a collection of five films Kramer directed and/or produced. The centerpiece of the set is a new 40th Anniversary Edition of Kramer's once-controversial interracial-marriage drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Also in the set is the Kramer-directed Ship of Fools, as well as The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, A Member of the Wedding, and The Wild One, all of which he produced.

Other older films coming to DVD include: The Joan Crawford Collection Volume 2 (Warner), which includes Sadie McKee, Strange Cargo, A Woman's Face, Flamingo Road, and Torch Song; Fox's Charlie Chan Collection Volume 4; and Kenneth Branagh's 1991 dramedy Peter's Friends (MGM), boasting an enviable cast, including Branagh, then-wife Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Imelda Staunton. For some reason, MGM has seen fit to package the film in a box set alongside the misguided Elmore Leonard/Paul Schrader satire Touch, the 1988 Patrick Dempsey-Jennifer Connelly vehicle Some Girls, and Scott Baio and Willie Aames in Zapped! Strange bedfellows indeed.

Finally, if you're jonesing for TV on DVD, this week sees the release of season 1 of The Equalizer (Universal), as well as the Vern-approved Blade: the Series (New Line). But fear not — only one more week until the release of Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete Fourth Season, the rare DVD that can be enjoyed by both Chuck Norris fans and Conan O'Brien watchers.

Et-Yuma-ology

Peter Smith — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

In Slate, Brett Sokol explains how a recently remade Western added a word to the Cuban lexicon. "Take a walk down any of Havana's main thoroughfares," he writes, "and you'll hear American visitors hailed as yumas, while the United States itself is affectionately dubbed La Yuma." This is a spin on the term "La Yunay", which was, back in the bad old Batista days was inspired by the omnipresent United Fruit Company but was the closest most Cubans could come to saying "United." Cuban audiences were nuts about American Westerns, though, and when the original 3:10 to Yuma played Havana, Cubans looking for a catchy slang terms for Americans were quick to trade up to "Yumas," which was similar to "Yunays" but more lovable in its associations. Castro's government eventually mostly banned American Westerns from Cuban screens in favor of ideologically pure entertainment from the Soviet bloc. But by the late 1970s even Fidel must have been getting sick of movies starring tractors, because the freeze on American pop culture thawed a bit, and both 3:10 to Yuma and the slang word it had inspired made a comeback.

For Elmore Leonard, on whose novel of the same name the film was based, this is all just a reminder of how fluky pop culture can be: he simply picked the name "Yuma" because that's where the prison was. Of course, that was in another lifetime, before he figured out that the big money for him was never going to be in writing Westerns; back in 1957, he scored $4,000 for the screen rights, with a clause assuring him another $2,000 if the story was filmed again. His feelings about the remake? "My agent is working on getting me that two grand." — Phil Nugent