The Screengrab : hilary swank

Up The Academy: Screengrab Salutes The All-Time Best & Worst Best Picture Winners (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

THE BEST:

ANNIE HALL (1977)

I was downright horrified when Woody Allen’s brainy romantic comedy swiped the Best Picture Oscar away from Star Wars on the night of the Academy Awards’ golden anniversary edition. And considering the innovation and impact of George “the Neck” Lucas’ classic blockbuster (and the fact that a far inferior popcorn flick like Return of the King was considered worthy of the top prize nearly three decades later), I still have issues with the snub. But the choice is more comprehensible now in my reflective middle age dotage than it was in the midst of my pre-pubescent geekery: America in the ‘70s was far more interested in grit and neuroses than fanboy fantasy, and the wookies and Jedi philosophy must have seemed especially goofy compared to the grim realities of then-recent Best Picture winners like The French Connection, The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And if somebody had to shoot down Luke Skywalker, then I’m glad it was Annie Hall. For one thing, it was a fair fight, since the Academy tends to hold comedy and science fiction in the same low regard. More importantly, though, for all the great jokes about dead sharks and Kafka, Annie Hall is a touching, highly relatable masterpiece of character and storytelling, in service of a romantic pairing as iconic as Bogie & Bacall: to this day, whenever the film comes on TV, my parents (a small town Yankee version of Alvy & Annie who somehow stayed together) inevitably wind up holding hands and misting up...which is just about as cute as prickly, overeducated white people get. Plus, with its twisty storytelling, animated sequences and meta sight gags, Annie Hall is far more visually and structurally interesting than most Best Picture winners in any genre. And besides, if a romantic comedy had to beat Star Wars in 1977, at least it wasn’t The Goodbye Girl.

THE APARTMENT (1960)

Billy Wilder’s knack for crafting affecting, humane comedy was close to unparalleled, and few of his films showcased that gift better than 1960’s The Apartment, an effervescent rollercoaster spiked with grown-up melancholy. Jack Lemmon spends his days as one of corporate America’s nondescript suits, and his nights loaning out his apartment to superiors so they can have a place to covertly screw their mistresses. Lemmon’s everyman pines for Shirley MacLaine’s elevator girl, who’s involved with Lemmon’s boss (Fred MacMurray), a thorny love triangle laced with workplace pecking-order tensions, and one given verve by Wilder’s deft satirical hand. Yet for all its bubbly wit, The Apartment’s lasting relevance is partially due to the muted sorrow that lurks around the busy frame’s corners – a nagging sadness wrought from its protagonists’ stubborn willingness to define themselves via their vocations, and which consequently makes Lemmon and MacLaine’s ultimate leap into love feel not fairy-tale preordained, but hard-earned.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)

If Brando's dockworker Terry Malloy represented one definitive take on the '50s prole rebel hero, Montgomery Clift's Pvt. Robert E. Lee Pruitt is the alienated '50s hero who thinks he's found a place for himself in the ultimate conformist culture, the army. Clift was on his way to being Brando's equal as a great new kind of movie actor when the car accident that shattered his face also crushed his confidence and derailed his career, and here he's as gentle and sure of the path he should be on as Brando's heroes tended to be instinctively assertive yet lost. But as much as he loves the army and welcomes the chance to be given rules to follow, some part of him can't help bucking when he's given orders that he knows are wrong. He won't box for the company because he's afraid of killing somebody in the ring, and then he kills somebody in retaliation for the murder of his best friend because he knows that the system will simply absorb the injustice. In the end, the system he turned to for a home kills him off, almost as an afterthought. If the Best Picture winners are anything to go by, the 1950s must have been an especially schizoid time in American culture: the list swings back and forth between movies like this one and On the Waterfront, which seemed to be bursting with news and awareness about the state of the country, and such spectacles as The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, and Ben-Hur, which seemed like kaleidoscopes imported from a different solar system.

THE WORST:

RAIN MAN (1988)

It's a well-established Hollywood joke that actors can court Oscar by playing someone with a mental or physical disability, but most of these roles still require the actor to try to fit into some kind of narrative context and connect to the other performers while replicating some carefully studied tics or mannerisms. Dustin Hoffman fought for years to get the script of Rain Man filmed, and it's easy to see why: the role of the autistic Raymond gives him an excuse to shut himself off from everything and everyone going on around him, and to be praised for how thoroughly he could ignore everything while concentrating on his little acting exercises. He must have thought that all his Christmases were coming at once. As for his co-star, Tom Cruise, Rain Man dates from the beginning of that unfortunate period where, his box-office appeal being a given, he was concentrating on proving he could "act" by denying the audience his gleaming smile and acting like an obnoxious ass. (Oh, he was "acting." We're certain of it.) The movie itself is nothing but a tear-stained pedestal for two movie stars stuck in self-parody mode.

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2006)

This rigged, underlit, depressive wallow marks the nadir of Clint Eastwood's serious, craggy old thing period. The quality of the performances, especially Morgan Freeman's and Hilary Swank's, can't disguise the thinness of the stock characters that populate Paul Haggis's screenplay; in particular, Swank's grasping white-trash relations would be judged as vile, condescending stereotypes by a Jerry Springer audience. The best thing about the movie is that it inspired a hilarious public outcry among disability rights groups and assorted loons who thought that by having Swank's character opt to die rather than live out her life as a quadriplegic, it would start a trend and that impressionable disabled people would start offing themselves in droves. But even that was compromised when Eastwood, trying to address the controversy, announced that "I've gone around in movies blowing people away with a .44 magnum. But that doesn't mean I think that's a proper thing to do." He doesn't? Dude, you've earned the right to keep making boring movies for the rest of your life, but you don't have to disillusion us too.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five & Seven

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report Threat Level Orange: Hilary Duff Remakes “Bonnie and Clyde”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:30:00 GMT

OK, maybe there’s no need for a panic. After all, this Variety piece assures us that the upcoming indie The Story of Bonnie and Clyde is “a new adaptation of the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow rather than a remake of the 1967 classic film starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.” Still, even though I know she’s all growed up now, reading that Hilary Duff will star in the new version written and directed by Tonya S. Holly puts me in mind of Bugsy Malone. I’m sure it will all work out just fine.

Another Hilary, last name o’ Swank, will co-star with Minnie Driver in Betty Anne Waters. Per The Hollywood Reporter, it’s based on the true story of Waters (Swank), an unemployed single mother who saw her brother convicted for a murder-robbery in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison. Convinced of his innocence, she spent the next decade earning a law degree and working on her brother's case, challenging the conviction with DNA evidence.” It’s Swank’s Erin Brockovich, y’all!

Brendan Fraser is seeking Furry Vengeance. Fraser plays “a real estate developer whose new housing subdivision pushes far into a pristine part of the Oregon wilderness, pitting the developer against a band of angry critters,” Variety reports. I sure hope they’re talking cartoon critters.

Related:
Hilary Duff Stays Cool
Trailer Roundup: Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula

Trailer Review: Night at the Museum 2: Battle for the Smithsonian

Paul Clark — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Despite some middling reviews (or perhaps because of them) I found the original Night at the Museum a fairly nice-surprise. Admittedly, the film was a fairly innocuous effects-driven blockbuster, but its gee-whiz vibe was a refreshing change from a lot of family fare that clogs up the multiplexes. That said, I gotta say that the sequel looks like more of the same- more CGI mayhem, more exhibits behaving badly, and more recognizable comic faces than the last installment (in addition to the returning cast members, this one includes such ringers as Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Hank Azaria, Eugene Levy, Craig Robinson, and best of all, Christopher Guest). Still, while I’m not especially excited for this one, I expect I’ll enjoy it well enough, not least because I’m guessing Amy Adams will make a better Amelia Earhart than Hilary Swank, who’s all set to grub for a third undeserved Oscar for her upcoming biopic.

Yesterday's Hits: The Karate Kid (1984, John G. Avildsen)

Paul Clark — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made The Karate Kid a hit?: The Karate Kid is nothing if not a formula movie, and a number of ingredients were combined to make the film resound with audiences. To begin with, there’s the always dependable “underdog” element, which director John G. Avildsen previously mined with his Oscar-winning film Rocky. Then, of course, there was a sport that the hero had to learn in order to succeed- karate, of course, to capitalize on the burgeoning martial-arts craze. Finally, it was also a high-school movie- one which found new kid Daniel (Ralph Macchio), recently moved to California from New Jersey, forced to learn karate to fight off the bullies. With these three elements, it hardly mattered to audiences that the film was almost completely predictable.

Like its hero, The Karate Kid was an underdog, with few studio executives expecting it to make much money. What they didn’t count on was the word-of-mouth and repeat business that followed its release. Much of the buzz was fueled by the film’s most popular character, the elderly maintenance man Mr. Miyagi who trains the film’s hero Daniel (Ralph Macchio) in martial arts. As played by longtime character actor Noriyuki “Pat” Morita- recognizable to viewers from his recurring role as Happy Days’ Arnold- Mr. Miyagi’s cranky inscrutability and unorthodox training methods make him feel like a flesh-and-blood version of Yoda. With its comfortable formula and Morita’s scene-stealing (and Oscar-nominated) performance, Karate Kid became the surprise hit of 1984, and beloved Miyagi-isms like “wax on, wax off” quickly entered the pop culture lexicon.

What happened?: As is so often the case, Hollywood just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Flush with the film’s unexpected box-office success, Columbia Pictures promptly green-lit a second Karate Kid adventure, one which took Daniel and Mr. Miyagi to the mentor’s childhood home on Okinawa. But while the second film actually managed to outgross the first, the well had run dry with the third installment, a pale retread of the original movie, which wasn’t that original to begin with. Then, after biding five more years, Columbia decided the public needed yet another Karate Kid, but without Macchio involved the main character became a girl, played by future two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. Add to this a short-lived Saturday morning Karate Kid series, and you get the idea- the public just got Karate Kid-ed out.

Does The Karate Kid still work?: Not really. Now that the film’s heyday has passed, Karate Kid looks hokier than ever. The formulas that made the movie a hit have been played out, and the film itself isn’t good enough to transcend them. It doesn’t help that the film (which runs a bloated 127 minutes) has a lot of slow patches, which are largely found in the scenes that don’t involve Mr. Miyagi. Daniel’s relationship with “Ali-with-an-I” (future Oscar-nominee-turned-fertility-nurse Elisabeth Shue) starts promisingly, but quickly turns to a clichéd movie romance with a touch of a rich girl/poor boy dynamic, and the screenplay can’t be bothered to find a new wrinkle. No less formulaic is the pack of eeeeeeeeevil martial artists from the Cobra Kai dojo, where all of the best students are blonde preppies and the classes are run like a cross between boot camp and a meeting of the Hitler Youth. It should goes without saying that Daniel is a dark-haired, brown-eyed Italian-American boy.

Then there’s Avildsen’s direction, which is clumsy and hamfisted. In the eight years since Rocky, he apparently forgot how to shoot action, since the fight scenes here generally move too quickly to tell most of what’s happening. Meanwhile, Avildsen intersperses plenty of sunsets, along with a number of cheesy montages, all of which are underscored with the most obvious music choices (I call it “The Tao of Steve Syndrome”). A beach party is set to The Flirts and Jan & Dean’s “(Bop Bop) On the Beach”, a song called a song called “Young Hearts” underscores Macchio and Shue’s first date, and the final tournament is accompanied by Joe Esposito’s deathless dumb-as-dust (and sadly memorable) power ballad “You’re the Best.” All of these factors and more make Rocky look like the model of subtlety and restraint by comparison.

Yet when Mr. Miyagi is onscreen, the movie still works pretty well. Sure, the wise Asian mentor is an age-old stereotype, but Morita makes the character a lot of fun. Supposedly, the great Toshiro Mifune tested for the role, but while his intense presence would have overwhelmed the story, Morita is just stern enough, while leavening the character with a gentle wit that makes him pretty irresistible. It’s been a good twenty years since I last saw The Karate Kid, and I was taken aback by how much of the film didn’t involve Mr. Miyagi. I think it says something about the movie that I’d forgotten most of the movie but remembered almost all of Mr. Miyagi’s scenes, wouldn’t you say?

DVD Digest for May 6, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: One of the most acclaimed films of 2007 arrives to do battle with some of the most reviled releases so far in 2008. Who will prevail? Read on…

DVD of the Week: No one does musical biography like Todd Haynes. This should have been clear from his previous films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Velvet Goldmine, and his latest film, I’m Not There, lays any remaining doubts to rest. But then, when one is making a movie about Bob Dylan, how could it possibly fit into a neat little package? The Weinstein Company’s two-disc DVD of the film contains a wide variety of features, including a commentary track with Haynes, two deleted scenes, some audition tapes, a handful of documentaries, and a tribute to Heath Ledger. But most of all, there’s the film itself- I’m Not There is sometimes wondrous, sometimes frustrating, but always worthy of its subject, and this DVD should find a place in the collections of cinephiles and Dylan fans alike.

Alas, the other new arrivals on DVD aren’t nearly that noteworthy, sometimes aggressively counteracting the awesomeness of I’m Not There with their wholesale suckitude. More typical of this week’s crop is the universally detested The Hottie and the Nottie (Genius Products- how’s that for irony?), the latest attempt by its star- who I refuse to name here- to achieve total media domination. Also this week: Ice Cube and Tracy Jordan Morgan in First Sunday (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You (Warner, also Blu-Ray); the long-awaited Eva Longoria Parker vehicle Over Her Dead Body (New Line); and 2006 TIFF Audience Award Winner Bella (Lions Gate). Also, this week brings the release of the heartwarming family-themed vagina dentata comedy Teeth, as well as Sony’s first step into the Bollywood market, Saawariya (also Blu-Ray). But while a few of these are worth seeing, I’d have to say this was probably the easiest week to pick a DVD of the Week in quite a while.

A few new editions of some already-on-DVD titles will be hitting stores this week as well, including: The Bridges of Madison County Deluxe Edition (Warner); Serial Mom Collector’s Edition (Focus); and a two-disc special edition of Twister (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Finally, this week’s sole Blu-Ray only release is the 2004 remake of Shall We Dance?

Sorry folks, that’s all I’ve got. Next week promises to bring more DVD goodness. Not a moment too soon, I say.

The Ten Greatest Mentors in Movie History, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Back in 1989, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg may have been making a point about what a bad-ass their archaeologist superhero when they cast the original James Bond as their hero's father and then showed that he felt no awe for this paragon: instead, he filched his personal style from some whip-wielding, ethically dubious mug in hobo-wear. In the forthcoming new Indy movie, Indy has acquired a son of his own, and it seems a safe bet that the movie will not end without li'l Indy looking up at his dad's craggy face and recognizing how lucky he is to have such an icon to admire and learn from. Thus does Indy come full circle as an instructional figure, an odd fate for a guy who used to sneak out of his campus office through the window so that he wouldn't have to face his students and risk earning his paycheck. If you're looking for a really impressive mentor, educator, guru, you could always do worse than get yourself into a movie.

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), WALL STREET (1987)

Mentors don't always do well in Oliver Stone movies. The hero of the autobiographical Platoon had two of them, but one of them got killed and the hero wound up having to shoot the other. The fast-talking uber-capitalist Gekko is luckier; he has a smart wardrobe to construct around his power suspenders, an Academy Award, and a famous speech that will get replayed on the nightly news every time there's a market downturn or somebody who's worth more than the national revenue of Venezuela gets nabbed for insider trading. Actually, Gekko's weak link is agreeing to share his wisdom with the obnoxious little mouth-breather played by Charlie Sheen, the scowling kid from the wrong side of the tracks with the chip on his shoulder. Unable to work out his issues, Sheen screws his sensei over and then adds injury to, well, injury by setting him up and selling him out to the feds. Back when Wall Street was in theaters, it was possible to feel sorry for Gordon at the end, but since then it's become possible to get some perspective on these things. Today, after his stay at some Club Fed, he probably has his own reality TV show. Charlie Sheen can watch it when he gets home from his job scrubbing public toilets.

Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), THE KARATE KID (1984)

I feel confident that Pat Morita's martial-arts-instructing janitor richly deserves his place here, even though I'm actually pretty sure that I never did see The Karate Kid. (Hell, I might be less sure if I had seen it.) Consider that this is a guy who, thanks to his Oscar-nominated performance here, managed to pull off a comeback almost a decade after he'd ill-advisedly abandoned the cast of Happy Days for a starring role in the sitcom Mr. T and Tina. (Can you tell me what ever became of Tina?) And he must be really good in this, because a lot of people lined up to see the movie, and they must have had their eyes glued to him, because I did see The Outsiders, and the one thing I remember from that is that looking at Ralph Macchio will make your eyeballs bleed. True, most of his biggest later roles would be in Karate Kid sequels, and while I'm not sure that I ever saw any of them either, I'm sure that they gave him the chance to really explore the possibilities of the character, plus he got to meet Hilary Swank. Clearly he was a fellow anyone would be well advised to seek out for advice, except on the subject of which Gus Van Sant movie to appear in. Wax on, wax off, motherfucker!

W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), BARTON FINK (1991)

Lured to Hollywood with the promise of easy money and big-screen glory, Barton Fink (John Turturro) quickly reaches an impasse in his writing. So with nowhere else to turn, his producer suggests that he find an established writer to mentor him. For his troubles, he gets W.P. Mayhew. Mayhew, played by a pre-Frasier John Mahoney, is a literary legend clearly modeled after William Faulkner, one who has toiled on countless screenplays for the studio in all possible genres. Tellingly, Barton first discovers Mayhew while puking out his liquid lunch in the men's room of the studio commissary. But Barton is so starstruck that he pursues him anyway, despite Mayhew's reputation as a washed-up souse. Unfortunately for the would-be student, the master whose guidance he seeks is too busy drinking and ranting at his secretary/live-in lover(Judy Davis) to give him much help with his writing, and indeed, it's Davis who's been doing most of the writing lately anyway. Yet while Mayhew isn't the mentor Fink bargained for, he's nonetheless valuable to Fink, providing him an objective lesson in what can happen to even truly great writers when they've been swallowed up by Hollywood. The lessons he teaches aren't pretty, but Barton isn't likely to forget them.

Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn), DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY (2004)

The schlubby regulars at Average Joe's gymnasium are facing difficult times. With their beloved gym struggling financially and facing takeover from a more sophisticated fitness center, they have to raise a boatload of money to keep from going under. So they do what any bunch of scrappy underdogs would do in a similar situation- they enter a nationwide dodgeball tournament, even though they're not especially athletic and can't compete with more experienced dodgeballers. What's a ragtag band of self-labeled Average Joes to do? Find a coach, that's what. Or more precisely, let a coach find them. But not just any coach, mind you. None other than Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn) a fifties-era dodgeball legend who's now confined to a wheelchair. With a mixture of abuse and tough love, Patches whips the Joes into shape using exercises such as one founded on the theory, "if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball." Faster than you can say "Eye of the Tiger," the Average Joes are national contenders. Of course, their ascent has less to do with Patches' coaching style than it does to the demands of the plot- to say nothing of divine intervention from Lance Armstrong and Chuck Norris- but Torn is so irascibly funny in the role that it seems wrong not to include him. After all, how can you not love a guy who gets a line like, "is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No, but I do it anyway, because it's sterile and I like the taste."

Cole (J. T. Walsh), THE GRIFTERS (1990)

Midway through its narrative, Stephen Frears's adaptation of Jim Thompson's seamiest pulp classic pulls the brakes on itself to fill in Myra's (Annette Bening) back story, to show that she learned the intricacies of the con-artist's game at the feet of the old pro Cole--played by J. T. Walsh, an actor with a blandly sturdy facade that, more often than not (Breakdown, Sling Blade, Nixon, The Last Seduction), served as the mask of a mean, sick puppy. Here, he's onscreen just long enough to show the highs of his profession (pulling off a sweet scam and celebrating after) and the lows (he goes nuts). Maybe the filmmakers wanted to get him on and off fast so that he didn't turn to the audience and make a bonus pitch for the United Way.

--Paul Clark; Phil Nugent

Click here for Part 2.

"Stop-Loss"; Kimberly Peirce on the Back-Door Draft

Phil Nugent — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Kimberly Peirce's first feature, the 1999 Boys Don't Cry, starred Hilary swank as Brandon Teena, the cross-dressing woman who was murdered by a couple of male associates who had met her when she was presenting herself as a man. It was one of the biggest indie success stories of the period and made a star of Swank (who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance), who had previously been best known for The Next Karate Kid. Of all the up-and-coming filmmakers who managed to get their bids in just before the millennium turned, Peirce has been perhaps the most conspicuously missing in action since. Now, nine years later, she's back with her new film, Stop-Loss. The title refers to the "loophole" in American soldiers' contracts permitting for "involuntary extensions" of their tours, as "national security" is deemed to require it. Peirce learned about the so-called "back door draft", which the military has been relying on in the face of a drop-off in recruiting numbers during the Iraq war, from her half-brother, who enlisted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Peirce herself had responded to 9/11 by "traveling the country in 2003, interviewing military men and women and recording homecoming parades for a potential documentary about soldiers from sign-up to return." Then she started tinkering with a script for a fictional film called "AWOL." It wasn't until she'd listened to her brother's stories, and watched his cache of videos made by soldiers overseas, that her ideas began to focus around the idea of a patriotic soldier (played in Stop-Loss by Ryan Phillippe) who wanted to serve his country and has done his time but now wants to be allowed to move on and live his life. The army has other ideas.

Peirce hasn't just been kicking back for much of the nine years since Boys Don't Cry. Even before she began grappling with this new subject matter, she'd flirted with making movies based on Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Arthur Golden's novel Memoir of a Geisha, and the notorious inside-Hollywood murder of William Desmond Taylor. She also considered adapting The Ice at the Bottom of the World, a novel by Mark Richard, before instead inviting Richard to collaborate with her on the script of what became Stop-Loss. A self-described "Southern conservative," Richard may have counterbalanced Peirce's politics and helped prevent the script from turning into a screed. But if Stop-Loss is one more Iraq movie, it also has core similarities to Boys Don't Cry. “When I talked to a wounded soldier who lost his limbs and still wants to go back," says Peirce, "he told me, ‘It’s not the war, it’s the men." As in Boys Don't Cry, Peirce has caught hold of a story of small town kids who risk their lives out of a need for a certain kind of camaraderie. The heroes who feel that they've fulfilled their duty and now expect to be dealt with honorably have only their tiny support network to rely on. “There was a sense of deep, deep longing before Stop-Loss," says Peirce. "Boys set the bar very high artistically for me. I wanted to be that much in love with my next character. I wanted to feel it was taking over my whole life. I was lonely when I wasn’t able to work on a movie at that level again."

No, But I've Read the Movie: THE BLACK DAHLIA

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Although much more commercially successful, the "L.A. Quartet" novels by the disturbed but fascinating noir novelist James Ellroy — consisting of The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz — didn't represent the great artistic leap forward that his "Underworld U.S.A." trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and the upcoming Blood's a Rover) did. The latter books were the ones that really lifted Ellroy from skilled genre specialist to ambitious and near-brilliant American novelist, representing both his own development as a writer and his desire to see the noir novel shed its genre restrictions and take its place amongst great literature. Even if one argues that White Jazz is the real transition — and many people have, convincingly — The Black Dahlia is a rough piece of work, somewhat formless and definitely formulaic in a way that his later books would avoid. While it features many of the same themes of sexual obsession and moral ambiguity that would mark his later work, it remained somewhat inextricably bound in the bad parts of pulp and the tendency to police-prodedural tropes. That said, the "L.A. Quartet" books are far more straightforward narratives, with less emphasis on the black depths of psychology and more to carry the narrative than chopped-up internal monologues. No one has yet attempted to film any of the "Underworld U.S.A.", but if it ever happens, the results will likely be a less successful film than L.A. Confidential; the qualities that make it a lesser novel — overemphasis on plot, weaker internal monologue, and a grounding in the archetypical qualities of film noir — are the same ones that made it a better film. The Black Dahlia, for all its faults, is an eminently more filmable book than The Cold Six Thousand. Or so you might have thought until Brian De Palma showed up in 2006 and proved you wrong, wrong, wrong by burping out this mishandled disaster of an adaptation. WHAT IT HAD: Good intentions, and not much else. It's not as if De Palma doesn't know how to handle film noir — he's proven on many occasions that he's adept at the genre, and had illustrated his affinity as recently as his previous movie (2002's underrated Femme Fatale). Even though he wasn't able to hold his post-modernist trickster tendencies in check, The Black Dahlia could have worked as simultaneous tribute to and subversion of classic noir, the only possible way to read the way it came out that makes any sense, if he'd assembled a better cast, better script, and. . . well, different director. Mark Isham provides some nice, moody music for the soundtrack, and, as one might expect from the man who brought you The Untouchables, it's a gorgeous-looking film with some great Vilmos Szigmond cinematography.

WHAT IT LACKED: Where to begin? A coherent vision, a decent script, a solid creative interpretation of the source material, a consistent point of view, and most of all, a cast worthy of the material. Screenwriter Josh Friedman had worked on the script for years, but it's still a mess, and clearly not to his strengths, which lie mostly in sci-fi genre work. It had originally been optioned to David Fincher, who, given De Palma's clear boredom and frustration with the project, may have been a much better choice to tackle the project. And the cast is pretty much an absolute disaster: Josh Hartnett completely lacks either charisma or weight, Scarlett Johansson is in way over her head, Aaron Eckhart is a non-entity, Hilary Swank looks like she should be in a completely different movie, and Mia Kirshner isn't even remotely up to the task of playing the title role, especially given that it's much expanded from the novel.

DID IT SUCCEED?: No way. Brian De Palma is already one of the most divisive directors around, with legions of haters for every dozen fans he's picked up over the years, but even his staunchest defenders — I'm one — couldn't get behind The Black Dahlia. The critical consensus on the release of the long-awaited film was that it was a megaton bomb, and for once, the accepted wisdom is pretty much right on the money. A good movie could have been made from James Ellroy's novel, but this sure as hell isn't it. The novel is a formative effort from Ellroy, and while L.A. Confidential is still superior to the movie, so too is The Black Dahlia for entirely different reasons. With White Jazz slated to hit the big screen next year directed by Joe Carnahan — who most recently brought us the abysmal Smokin' Aces — Ellroy's luck with film adaptations of his work will likely continue circling the drain.

Let's Twist Again

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:30:00 GMT

At this most retrospective time of the year, let us look back at the thrillers of 2007 and the mind-bending twists that made them so thrilling. By “mind-bending,” of course, I mean ludicrous or predictable or – ever so rarely – actually clever enough to make the attached movie almost worth sitting through. Which twists missed, which got us pissed, and which made the list with The Mist?

It goes without saying that there are spoilers galore after the jump, so tread lightly…

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

The Plot: Student Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) is abducted by a Saw-like fiend who dismembers her and leaves her for dead. When she awakes in the hospital, she insists she is actually a stripper named Dakota Moss.

The Twist: Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss are twins, separated at birth!

Verdict: Lohan may have pulled off the twin routine in The Parent Trap, but in her current state it’s asking a bit much for her to pull off one character, let alone two.

THE REAPING

The Plot: Hilary Swank is a former missionary who has lost her faith and now travels the country debunking miracles. She has her hands full when a series of biblical plagues descends on a small Southern town and the townspeople blame a young girl they believe to be possessed by a demon.

The Twist: The young girl is not possessed by a demon. Swank has been impregnated by the local cult leader, and she is carrying the devil spawn.

Verdict: This twist manages to turn a perfectly awful Exorcist knockoff into a genuinely terrible Rosemary’s Baby rip-off in the blink of an eye. No small feat!

THE NUMBER 23

The Plot: Dog catcher Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) finds intriguing parallels to his own life in a strange book written by the mysterious Topsy Kretts. The book, The Number 23, concerns a detective who murders his lover.

The Twist: Sparrow wrote the book himself as a confession to the murder of his college girlfriend. Topsy Kretts = Top Secrets!

Verdict: It takes director Joel Schumacher nearly fifteen minutes to explain the twist, which should have been his first clue that it wasn’t a very good one.

PREMONITION

The Plot: The morning after her husband Jim is killed in a car accident, Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) wakes up to find he is still alive. The next day, Jim is dead again, and Linda realizes she is living the week of his death out of order.

The Twist: Linda figures this out in time to prevent the car crash that would have killed Jim. But he is killed almost immediately anyway when a fuel truck skids out of control and slams into him.

Verdict: No explanation is ever given for Linda’s scrambled chronology, and she doesn’t even seem all that curious about it – so why should we?

THE MIST

The Plot: The residents of a small Maine town are trapped in a supermarket when a mist full of fearsome critters rolls in. Bloodshed and insanity ensue before David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and a handful of survivors attempt their escape by car.

The Twist: The survivors run out of gas in the mist. Convinced there is no escaping a lingering, painful death via critter, Drayton mercy kills the others, including his own son. Minutes later, the mist clears as the military arrives to wipe out the critters.

Verdict: So mean, sadistic, and cruelly satisfying, even Stephen King didn’t come up with it – it was Frank Darabont’s idea, and who knew he had it in him?

Morning Deal Report: I Vant to Suck Your Blooood

Peter Smith — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Hilary Swank is "a TV producer who travels to Romania for an interview with a notorious European arms dealer" — but it turns out he's a sexy vampire!

Michael Mann and Johnny Depp will soon film Public Enemies, about Depression-era gangsters, with Depp as John Dillinger.

A veritable dream-team of documentary directors is adapting Freakonomics.

— Peter Smith

Trailer Roundup: Jumper, P.S. I Love You, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Peter Smith — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Jumper

Okay, looks like there’s two ways this could go — entertaining silly or dumb silly. But either way, chances are pretty good that it’ll get silly, which is fine with me since too many big-budget action movies take themselves way too seriously. But then, how do you play a movie about guys who teleport (or "jump") with a completely straight face? The one thing that has me a little uneasy about Jumper is the presence of Hayden Christensen in the lead role. Sure, he’s attractive and in good shape, but when you’re casting the role of a self-centered guy who uses his super-power for his own benefit, you should probably cast someone who possesses more edge and sexual danger than a Ken doll. Jamie Bell, on the other hand, looks to be having a lot of fun, and at the very least the trailer seems to promise the Christensen vs. Samuel L. Jackson battle that was denied to them when they were playing Mannequin Skywalker and Mace Windu.

P.S.: I Love You

Now that Hilary Swank has won two Best Actress Oscars for the two good movies she's made to date, Hollywood seems committed to turning her into a major movie star, despite the fact that she’s not especially likable or charismatic. So after the inspirational-teacher drama Freedom Writers and the supernatural horror of The Reaping earlier this year, she's ready to unleash her inner Meg Ryan with P.S. I Love You. It would be one thing if this was merely sappy-looking, but the problems I have with this movie run a whole lot deeper. Like it or not, pop culture does influence our dreams and fantasies, and the idea of a movie in which a young woman's dead husband has penned a series of letters to help the woman he loves move forward after his death strikes me as more than a little dishonest. Most widowed spouses have to deal with a mountain of unfinished business and unanswered questions following the death of their loved ones, without the benefit of magical posthumous missives to guide them every step of the way. Some move on, some don’t, but they must learn to do it on their own. Besides, what fatal disease affords its victim plenty of time and energy to formulate an intricate plan to be carried out after his death? Wouldn’t he have been busy, y'know, suffering?

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Normally, I dislike trailers for foreign-language films that avoid showing any subtitles. But in this case I’d say it was the right choice, since Diving Bell is the latest film from artist-director Julian Schnabel, whose films emphasize visual flair over memorable dialogue. There’s no mention of Schnabel until the very end of the trailer — strange considering that by all accounts he's hardly the self-effacing type — but between the unique imagery and the portrait of a tragic artist, there’s no mistaking who was behind the camera. And it’s nice to see Matthieu Amalric in a meaty, high-profile role like this. I know it’s been said before, but when a filmmaker decides to make The Roman Polanski Story, Amalric's really the only logical choice for the lead role.

— Paul Clark

Take Five: Movies With Lyrics

Peter Smith — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Danish director Susanne Bier’s new film, Things We Lost in the Fire, is already generating a tremendous amount of indie hype. If the buzz manages to survive this opening weekend, it may result in the words "Oscar" and "Halle Berry" being mentioned without the words "fluke" or "Catwoman" appearing in the same sentence. The quiet family drama’s name may seem pretty arcane to people who aren’t as into indie rock as they are indie film – the title is drawn from an outstanding 2001 album by Duluth slowcore band Low. As more and more directors who grew up on a diet of punk, alternative and indie rock start making films, we’re likely to see more such abstractions; but while we wait for a generation raised on post-hardcore to grow up, here’s a few films from the past with musical names.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (1968)

Filmed simultaneously with the Rolling Stones' recording of the song of the same name – indeed, footage of the Stones putting down tracks for the single are featured in the film – this was one of the first movies to use a rock song as its title. Jean-Luc Godard’s documentary/agitprop/drama/black comedy/whatever is a typically brilliant, typically frustrating film, very much in keeping with his work of the era. And, like the song, the film seems to be nothing so much as an admission that the end of the Sixties were a chaotic, turbulent vortex that owed as much to the hand of Satan as they did the peace-and-love generation.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

Gus Van Sant’s disorienting, dazzling, neo-Shakespearian drama about the lives of two gay hustlers (Keanu Reeves and the late River Phoenix) was a major step forward in the director’s postmodernist sensibility. Crammed with classical allusions, stunt casting, surrealism and shattered (or at least badly bruised) fourth walls, its determination to blend the sophisticated and the trashy was an appropriate tribute to the junk-culture leanings of the B-52s. "Private Idaho", a track off their 1980 sophomore effort Wild Planet, lent the movie its name more than a decade later. It’s a pretty good match, too – try dancing to the song’s frenetic rhythms during some of the movie’s more depressing moments.

THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD (1995)

Unfairly slammed as a third-rate Tarantino knockoff for no better reason than its unfortunately timed release date, this intricate, too-clever-for-its-own-good heist thriller from director Gary Fleder is really more of a second-rate film noir that somehow got made fifty years too late. Still, maybe it deserved some of the bad reputation that got it lost among a raft of hip, violent thrillers – while it drew its name from an evocative, hilarious song off of the late Warren Zevon’s 1991 album Learning to Flinch, the filmmakers (no doubt aware that you can’t copyright a title, even one as distinctive as this) neither sought not received Zevon’s permission in using the name.

BOYS DON’T CRY (1999)

The movie that put Hilary Swank (and, to a lesser degree, Chloe Sevigny) on the map was also the first major Hollywood release to treat transgender people as anything but a punch line. The story of Brandon Teena, who lived most of his life as a male before being beaten to death by friends after they discovered he was biologically female, set the tone for a spate of indie films about homosexuality and gender issues. Its deeply ironic name was drawn from a 1980 single by the Cure, taken from their debut album of the same name, but the version featured in the movie itself is a far inferior cover. Seek out the original, one of the strongest the band put out before becoming a self-caricature.

MAN ON THE MOON (1999)

It’s no coincidence that Milos Forman’s biopic of experimental comedian Andy Kaufman drew its name from the 1992 R.E.M. song of the same name (from their Automatic for the People album). The song is itself a worshipful tribute to the comic, featuring references to his most famous routines and a chorus where singer Michael Stipe imitates Kaufman imitating Elvis. What’s more interesting is that this may be one of the few times where the video for the original song is far superior to the movie the song inspired – the inventive Peter Care-directed video is much more memorable than the somewhat stodgy and predictable film by Forman.

— Leonard Pierce