The Screengrab : fatal attraction

Maurice Jarre, 1924 - 2009

Phil Nugent — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

In the course of a career that spanned fifty years, Maurice Jarre, who died Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 84, composed some of the best-known music ever to grace a film soundtrack. Jarre, who had studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, began his film career with the score for George Franju's 1952 documentary Hôtel des Invalides. In the next ten years, he would work on some thirty pictures in his native France, including Franju's horror classic Eyes without a Face (1960), his celebrated version of Thérèse Desqueyroux,, and, later, his 1963 Judex, as well as The Olive Trees of Justice (1962), made in Algeria by the American independent filmmaker James Blue. Jarre's real big break came when producer Sam Spiegel hired him to apply the appropriate symphonic sweep to David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The Lawrence score won Jarre an Academy Award, and Jarre became one of Lean's regular collaborators, writing the music for Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (1984), both of which also won him Academy Awards, and Ryan's Daughter (1970). His success with Lawrence also inspired other Hollywood producers to swing open their doors, and he was soon working on movies by such directors as Fred Zinneman (Behold a Pale Horse, 1964), John Frankenheimer (The Train, 1964; Grand Prix, 1966; The Fixer, 1968), William Wyler (The Collector, 1965), Richard Brooks (The Professionals, 1966), and Alfred Hitchcock (Topaz, 1969).

Jarre continued to work steadily through the '70s, '80s, and '90s, doing especially memorable work for John Huston on The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Peter Weir on The Year of Living Dangerously (1975), and racking up Oscar nominations for The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Witness (1985), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), Ghost (1990), and the controverisal The Message (1976). He also won ASCAP Awards for Ghost, Fatal Attraction (1987), and Dead Poets Society (1989); in 1993, the society bestowed upon him its Lifetime Achievement Award, though his lifetime achievement in film scoring still had a ways to go: he would continue to work into the new millennium with his final movie score, I Dreamed of Africa (2000), followed by the score for the 2001 TV film Uprising. The father of the production designer Stéfanie Jarre, the screenwriter Kevin Jarre (Tombstone, Glory), and the popular electronic musician Jean Michel Jarre. Already famous for his tendency to incorporate exotic and native instruments into his scores, Jarre himself began to favor electronic scores over full symphonic music in the '80s, a development that he assured anyone who would listen had nothing to do with his finding the process any easier. He is survived by his fourth wife, Fong F. Khong, who he married in 1984.

Trailer Review: Obsessed

Paul Clark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Remember all of the sex-soaked stalker thrillers that flooded the moviegoing landscape in the years following Fatal Attraction? Obsessed looks like it could have fit into that cycle, and I don’t mean that in a good way. As the high-powered businessman whose wandering eye leads him to the worst possible woman, Idris Elba is yet another in a long line of Wire cast members unable to make the jump to big-screen stardom. And do I detect an anti-interracial relationships undercurrent? It’s hard to imagine a movie nowadays about a white man sleeping with a psychotic African-American woman, who then threatens to tear apart his idyllic family. To say nothing of a gender switch, with the cheating spouse being an African-American woman and the one-night-stand-turned-stalker a white man. But who really cares about eggheaded stuff like that when we get to see Beyoncé having a catfight with Ali Larter, right? Honestly, I could care less either way. I’ve seen this done too many times already to bother with it yet again.

Morning Deal Report: Johnny Depp, Household Pet

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Don’t tell the newly pious Joe Eszterhas, but his old partner in crime Paul Verhoeven is in talks to direct another erotic thriller. Variety says the untitled script by Wendy Miller “centers on a college intern who finds himself trapped in a dangerous affair with the boss’s wife. Project is described as Risky Business meets Fatal Attraction.” So…Fatal Business? Risky Attraction?

What is the terrifying secret of The Steam Experiment? I certainly can’t wait to find out, as Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts team up for the indie suspense thriller. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the plot concerns “six people trapped and terrorized in an urban Turkish bathhouse.” Just imagine being trapped in a bathhouse with Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts and you can already smell the suspense.

Johnny Depp reunites with Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) for the animated feature Rango. Per Variety, “Depp will voice the lead character, a household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self.” Really, that’s what it says – a household pet. As if revealing whether he’s a dog or cat or gerbil would be giving too much away.

Related:
Saint Joe: "Showgirls" Writer Finds Jesus
Depp vs. Murray: Dueling Gonzos

EW Makes Great-Movies List; Screengrab Points, Laughs

Paul Clark — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

With last week blessedly free of celebrities getting knocked up and/or being caught without underwear, Entertainment Weekly has seized upon this fallow period in entertainment news to unveil yet another list for your perusal. In this week’s double issue, EW’s writing staff unveiled their lists of “The New Classics” in a number of media, including their top 100 movies of the last quarter century. There were a few pleasant surprises- like #4 pick Blue Velvet making its second prominent appearance on a high-profile list in less than a week (after the latest AFI special)- and you can't really argue with Pulp Fiction at #1, but many of the choices left something to be desired. Put it another way- if you know both jack and shit about cinema, EW’s list is bound to feel pretty unsatisfactory, with a whopping six foreign-language films and two documentaries out of 100.

Of course, the makers of such lists are always prone to stating that their goal is to “stir up debate.” So in the proud Screengrab tradition of speaking truth (or at least strongly-worded fibs) to power, I’d like to go on record to state that a number of masterpieces of the past 25 years were ignominiously robbed in order to make way for the likes of Pretty Woman. On top of that, a few of the movies that made the list were so unceremoniously- and undeservingly- buried near the bottom that their inclusion is arguably even more of a disgrace when you consider the titles that outrank them. In keeping with EW’s format, I’ve kept the artsy-fartsy to a minimum- no shorts, no avant-garde, no mentions of Peter Watkins. Instead I’ve selected five pretty accessible movies (including a foreign-language pick) and one classic that deserved far better than EW wanted to give it.

But first, a note to EW’s webmaster: your online feature on the 26 greatest movie posters doesn’t want to scroll over to the poster for The Limey. Please fix this immediately. Thank you.

Now, my alternate selections, in no particular order:

The New World- to my eyes, the finest American film of the last 25 years. Should have qualified just by being one of the most beautiful films ever made, but there’s more to Terence Malick’s masterpiece than gorgeous cinematography and panoramic shots of nature. Malick’s re-creation of the founding of Virginia and the resulting “settlement” of the land is always completely convincing, transporting the viewer into the lifestyle (and mindsets) of the time in a way few period pieces can manage. But it’s also a heartrending love story of a particularly mature kind, as Pocahontas (the glowing Q’Orianka Kilcher) must learn to let go of her childish love in order to find sustainable happiness with another. The New World is a marvel, and I expect that we’ll be seeing it on plenty of lists in the decades to come.

Naked- Now, I can kind of understand leaving Malick off your list, since the guy’s only made two movies during the eligible period. But what’s your excuse when it comes to Mike Leigh? Even the Academy has caught on to Leigh’s greatness- witness the bevy of nominations for Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake- but for my money his best work to date is still Naked. Of course, it’s something of a bitter pill to swallow, with an almost painfully bleak view of human nature. And in the middle of it all is David Thewlis, giving one of the all-time great performances, as the compulsively verbal misanthrope Johnny, the kind of bastard whose sole redeeming virtue is that he knows exactly how much of a bastard he is. Thewlis owns the film, creating from the ground up a character so fascinating that we can’t help but watch him, mouth often agape, up through the film’s magnificent final shot.

Heavenly Creatures- Hey EW, you know that Peter Jackson guy? The one whose most famous films you’ve placed prominently at #2? Well, he did make movies before Lord of the Rings, and in its way Heavenly Creatures is just as good if not better. Beginning with a true-crime story that would in other hands have lent itself to sensationalism- teenage lesbian murderers!- Jackson instead crafted in alternately invigorating and harrowing movies about the seductiveness, and the dangers, of fantasy. As Pauline and Juliet (Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, in their breakthrough roles) grow ever more attached to their King-Arthur-meets-Ayn-Rand fairy tale land, they increasingly feel compelled to defend it against the encroachment of the everyday world, until the story commences in a sudden, shocking act of violence that sends these killer angels crashing back to Earth forever.

Once Upon a Time in America- Once again, Sergio Leone’s final masterwork is the odd man out among gangster dramas, with the EW writers forwarding the unfortunate notion that the genre began with The Godfather and ended with GoodFellas, with a brief stopover in Scarface Land. Leone’s film may not have the iconic status of Coppola, the seductiveness of Scorsese, or the gangsta cachet of DePalma, but as a cinematic achievement, it deserves respect, at least in its 227-minute long version. As a minor-key elegy for a crime culture that has long since passed, Once Upon a Time in America mops the floor with The Godfather, Part III, with as many classic moments as any film in Leone’s oeuvre. You’ll never look at a garbage truck the same way again.

Three Colors Trilogy- I debated including Decalogue on this list but decided against it because it premiered on television. But I had no such problem with Kieslowski’s trilogy, a wholly unique- yet entirely approachable- grand work in three parts. In telling three intimate stories, Kieslowski manages to capture a specific end-of-the-millennium worldview, as well as some surprising insights into human nature in general. But the film’s true power comes from their simplicity- Kieslowski tells us everything we need to know about these people and their lives, if only we know where (and how) to look. Beyond that, they’re just ravishing cinema, with the scores of Zbigniew Preisner ranking among the greatest ever written for the screen.

And finally…

Back to the Future- #91? Really? Working from perhaps the tightest and cleverest screenplay ever made into a Hollywood blockbuster, Robert Zemeckis and company turned what was essentially a comedic take on Americana into a genuine piece of Americana itself. How many movies of the past quarter century are this widely seen, or so beloved by all sectors of the moviegoing audience? Back to the Future is a textbook case of all the pieces lining up just so, as well as a testament to how wonderful a big-budget movie when the filmmakers trust their assembled elements enough to stay out of their own damn way. But hey, if you guys really think Shrek, Gladiator, Speed, Fatal Attraction, Scream, Beverly Hills Cop, Dirty Dancing (?!?!?), Out of Africa, and Napoleon Dynamite are all better than Back to the Future, I guess I don’t have anything left to say to you.

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

Yesterday's Hits: Fatal Attraction (1987, Adrian Lyne)

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Whenever I describe the idea of Yesterday’s Hits to someone who’s never read the column, I’m often asked, “why write about movies that aren’t popular anymore?” There are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest has always been a kind of anthropological fascination with the movies to which earlier generations gravitated. In some cases, the reasons behind the films’ blockbuster status are simple- because they craved good special effects, or because the stars were popular at the time. But in some cases, it goes deeper than that, because the film taps into a certain zeitgeist that makes it a must see. Simply put, it’s the right film at the right time. One example of this is Fatal Attraction.

What made Fatal Attraction a hit?: The 1980s were a profitable period for R-rated movies, and one of the prime beneficiaries of this was the erotic thriller genre. But while most movies of this kind were fairly disreputable, Fatal Attraction was different- a classy project pairing bankable leading man Michael Douglas with three-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close. Because of its pedigree, Fatal Attraction was able to attract a bigger audience than most films of the kind, becoming the second-biggest hit of 1987.

However, the film’s success was bigger than box-office grosses, with its title entering the popular lexicon. This was due in no small part to the way its screenplay (penned by James Dearden) tapped into two major issues of the day. First, after the advent of feminism, there was a certain degree of anxiety among many men about these newly independent and sexually powerful women, exemplified in the film by Glenn Close’s Alex. But also important- although less explicit in the film- was the sudden fear of sex which was caused by the discovery of AIDS earlier in the decade. Suddenly, the casual sex of the sixties and seventies carried with it deadly consequences. These two factors combined to make Fatal Attraction a topic of national conversation, with the film garnering six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Not bad for a project that had repeatedly been dismissed as a ripoff of Play Misty for Me and passed on by almost twenty filmmakers, including Brian DePalma and John Carpenter.

What happened?: While Fatal Attraction transcended the genre to which it ostensibly belonged, its box-office performance paved the way for an explosion of erotic thrillers, few of which were remotely as good, and almost none of which were as respectable. Most of the films that were made in its wake were sleazy and shameless, with filmmakers like screenwriter Joe Eszterhas aiming to outdo each other for kinky sexuality and elaborate deaths. In addition, there was a rise in direct-to-video erotic thrillers at the end of the eighties, occasioned in part by the home-video success of Fatal Attraction. For both of these reasons, and others besides, the erotic thriller genre had largely become a parody of itself even before Carl Reiner made his dire spoof Fatal Instinct in 1993.

Does Fatal Attraction still work?: Mostly, yes. For a movie of this kind, Fatal Attraction is pretty low-key for most of its duration. Dearden and director Adrian Lyne take time to properly establish the film’s characters and story rather than simply barreling through to the sex and violence. From the beginning, the film portrays Dan Gallagher’s (Douglas) life in detail- his beautiful wife Beth (Anne Archer), his little girl, his job as a high-powered lawyer, and his close friendships. It’s not until after we see what his everyday life is like that the film throws Alex into the mix, which allows us to see what he has before he does something that could cause him to lose it.

It’s because of this that the casting of Douglas is crucial. Most big stars of the period specialized in uncomplicated heroes, but Douglas was the exception, often playing flawed yuppie types with a dark side. Fatal Attraction gave him the one of his best roles, as a decent man who is almost done in by his arrogance- he cheats on his wife because he knows he’ll have fun, and he figures he’ll never get caught anyway, so where’s the harm? But of course, he does.

Also important is Close’s performance as Alex, who’s crazy all right, but also says some things that make a good amount of sense. After Dan unceremoniously dumps her, she calls him on it, saying he treats her like “some slut you can just bang a couple of times and throw in the garbage.” After she finds out she’s pregnant, she seeks him out and demands that he “accept his responsibilities.” Alex has her share of problems- she’s suicidal, for one thing- but most of her actions in the film’s first half are actually pretty reasonable. She’s been wronged, she’s pissed, and now she will. Not. Be. Ignored.

The first hour or so of Fatal Attraction works so well as a morality play, with Dan trying to figure out how to shake off Alex while dealing with his own guilt and keeping the truth from his wife, that it’s sort of disappointing when it moves into more traditional thriller territory. Some of the film’s most famous sequences- the boiled bunny, the kidnapping- still pack a punch, but they don’t fit very well with what came before. Mostly though, it feels too easy to turn Alex into a psycho. By making her a villain, it provides an easy opportunity for Dan to emerge as a hero working in the interest of protecting his family and saving his marriage. Compared to what came before, it’s far too tidy.

Especially damaging is the film’s climactic scene, in which Alex brandishes a butcher knife and tries to murder Beth. In Dearden’s original ending, Alex committed suicide in a manner that made it appear Dan had killed her, which led to him being arrested for her murder. However, after disastrous test screenings, the studio shot the new ending, which tested much better. But while turning Alex into a knife-wielding slasher helped the film’s box office, it hurt it quality-wise. With its original ending, not only do all of the Madame Butterfly references suddenly make sense, but the film becomes far more about Dan having to deal with the consequences of his affair and less about providing clear-cut violent catharsis for the audience. Sadly, a move like this is all too typical of Hollywood- so short-sighted that they’ll gladly torpedo a future classic in the interest of making the movie more bankable today. Of course, this is what made Fatal Attraction so ideal for Yesterday’s Hits. Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?