The Screengrab : john woo

Precursors: Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Nick Schager — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Those interested in fully readying themselves for this Friday’s Star Trek would be wise to bypass the franchise’s myriad small- and big-screen iterations and instead take a second look at Mission: Impossible III, the first and most recent franchise to get a vigorous kick in the behind from J.J. Abrams. Unfairly dismissed during its summer 2006 release because of star Tom Cruise’s couch-hopping antics and crazy comments about psychology and anti-depressants, the third Mission: Impossible remains the series’ most accessible and breathlessly exciting, characteristics mainly attributable to its director, who took on the project without any prior experience helming a tentpole extravaganza, and yet provided the no-nonsense adrenalized excitement absent from Brian De Palma’s intricate first and John Woo’s embarrassingly flamboyant second installments. Abrams borrows liberally from his TV series Alias as well as countless other sources for his story about IMF agent Ethan Hunt’s efforts to hunt down a Maguffin from a master criminal (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who’s kidnapped his new wife (Michelle Monaghan). And to be sure, not all of the narrative works, most notably with regards to its efforts to humanize the more-or-less superhuman Hunt. Still, Hoffman’s villain is excellent, and Abrams’ action-and-espionage centerpiece sequences have a visceral, invigorating electricity that one hopes Star Trek – which I’ll be reviewing here at The Screengrab later this week – also possesses.

1949 vs. 2012: John Woo/Roland Emmerich Deathmatch!

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:30:00 GMT

It’s deal-making time on the Croisette in Cannes, and while some deals are more ill-advised than others, we’ve rounded up a few notables worthy of mention.

John Woo is set to direct 1949, which we are assured is not a sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1941. Variety reports it is a “big budget romancer that will crank up as soon as he has finished his epic Red Cliff.” A Chinese-language epic “based on true events at the end of WWII and the final years of the Chinese Civil War, pic will star Chang Chen and Korea's Song Hye-kyo.”

Leap ahead 63 years and you’ll find Roland Emmerich’s 2012. Once again, Variety is on the case, reporting that John Cusack and Redbelt’s Chiwetel Ejiofor will star in the apocalyptic thriller, “whose title refers to the end days of human civilization as foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar. Story kicks off with a global cataclysm, which brings an end to the world as we know it, and chronicles the heroic struggle of the survivors.” Emmerich has already ended the world once, of course, with The Day After Tomorrow. We’re beginning to think he has issues.

And what the hell, since we’re already plundering Variety for this post, we might as well pass on the news that Steve Buscemi is joining the cast of Youth in Revolt, playing the father of Michael Cera in the film based on a novel by C.D. Payne. “Cera plays teenager Nick Twisp, who meets the girl of his dreams on a family vacation and destroys the trip trying to be with her.”

Take Five: Wong Kar-Wai

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:45:00 GMT

With My Blueberry Nights getting a limited-release opening in major cities across the country this weekend, Hong Kong legend Wong Kar-Wai will finally make his English-language feature film debut, and, after twenty years of building his reputation as a filmmaker, get a shot at the cherished American audience that can make or break a director. The only question is, will My Blueberry Nights be his Fritz Lang moment or his John Woo moment? Early reviews indicate that it might be the latter; the movie wasn't especially well-received when it opened Cannes last year, and producer Harvey Weinstein's drastic cut is said not to have helped matters any. The jury, likewise, is still out on whether or not Norah Jones can act, but the testimony onscreen is said to be pretty damning. If it turns out that it's a stiff, it might be all to the good and he can return to the environment in which he did his greatest work; and regardless of its quality, we're all geeked about his upcoming remake of Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai. We'll have to wait and see, but even if it turns out that My Blueberry Nights is Wong Kar-Wai's first major dud, he's still one of the most innovative, fascinating and consistently talented directors in contemporary film. Here's five movies that prove it.

CHUNG KING EXPRESS (1994)

Although he'd shown flickers of brilliance before (and already begun his tradition of naming his films after pop songs with his 1988 directorial debut, As Tears Go By), Chung King Express is the movie that established Wong Kar-Wai as a director capable of legitimate greatness. The highly stylized film, about a heartbroken Hong Kong cop on the prowl who falls in with a gorgeous and mysterious young woman in a drug gang, so impressed Quentin Tarantino that he invested a chunk of his own money to get this and Wong Kar-Wai's other films released in the United States. Even now, after he's stretched substantially, this is still a stunning film, chock full of quirky moments, philosophical speculation on the mediated life, and his ability to coax stellar performances out of his actors. A Godardian triumph.

ASHES OF TIME (1994)

Years in the making, and based on a highly popular Asian epic novel, it would have been easy for Ashes of Time to be a major step back in the career of Wong Kar-Wai. (Some critics, indeed, think it was.) After having established that he was a director of skill, ambition and daring, it seemed unusual for him to take on that classic Hong Kong trope, the martial arts epic — but as it happened, there was nothing to fear. He approached it with his typical attitude, sacrificing not a whit of artistic integrity, and the result is one of the most thoughtful, surreal, philosophical action epics ever put on screen. Wong Kar-Wai takes what could be a by-the-numbers swordplay drama and turns it into something bizarre, achronal, and transcendental — a wonderful movie that's hard to follow, but impossible to forget.

HAPPY TOGETHER (1997)

Althought it wasn't quite as well received as his previous spate of films — at least partly because of the controversial nature of its subject matter in his homeland of Hong Kong — Happy Together is still a highly rewarding addition to Wong Kar-Wai's body of work, and the first movie in which he begins to seriously mine the themes of thwarted passion and self-nullifying ennui that would shape his finest work to come. Bouyed by two fantastic performances in the lead roles by Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung, Happy Together follows the unconventional relationship between two expatriates from Hong Kong as they take a typically surreal and eventful road trip through Argentina. It's a passionate, sexy, and sometimes ridiculous movie, with gorgeous cinematography by Christopher Doyle, and a taste of greatness to come.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000)

Finally putting to bed his penchant for hip-pocket surrealism, Wong-Kar Wei finally plays it straight with this utterly beautiful, incredibly heartbreaking story of doomed romance set in the Hong Kong of the 1960s. Everything about it is pitch-perfect, from the stunning cinematography to the breathtaking costumes to the quiet, naturalistic screenplay, which makes its points with subtlety and grace rather than noise and distraction. The lead performances by Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung — some of the most controlled, precise, and yet emotionally engaging screen acting in decades — help further elevate the story of two unrequited lovers who, alone in a city of millions, reenact a sort of sham shadowplay of the illicit affair their spouses are having with one another, from good to great.

2046 (2004)

It was a risky move to create a sequel to a movie as distinct and delicately perfect as In the Mood for Love. It was an even riskier move to create a sequel that returned the more avant-garde elements of Wong Kar-Wai's filmmaking style — chronological jumps, elements of surrealism, non-linear storytelling, and bits and pieces of science fiction and fantasy — to the mix. But if anyone could pull it off, he could, and he did, with a sequel that may not precisely follow the tone of the previous film, but captures its mood and spirit exactly. In 2046, we follow Tony Leung's character from In the Mood for Love after Maggie Cheung has left his life — he's a more bitter figure than before, but still filled with romantic longing, which he now attempts to sublimate into a science fiction novel he's writing. While it's not quite the instant classic that its predecessor was, it's still a very worthy film that shows how adept Wong-Kar Wei is at blending his ruling passions as a filmmaker.

Trailer Review: Red Cliff (Japanese Trailer)

John Constantine — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:27:00 GMT

Those crazy cats over at Twitch have posted a Japanese trailer for John Woo’s return to the both the big screen and Hong Kong cinema, Red Cliff. We got some eyes on time with Red Cliff back at the beginning of February but this is a whole lot crisper than the earlier leak. There’s a bunch of new footage in these thirty-eight seconds, almost all of it large scale action and mood shots. If nothing else, it reinforces the fact that Woo is returning to his roots, even beyond the subject matter. There’s more vivid color in these scenes than anything the man’s done in twenty years. Still no word on a North American release. This is troublesome since, from the two Asian trailers that have come out so far, this is a flick that would be ill-served by a direct to DVD release.

You can check out the trailer here.

Famous Last Words: Round 1, Week 9

Paul Clark — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The influence of Quentin Tarantino loomed large over mid-90s pop culture, not only in the films he directed, but also those he starred in, and even the movies he claimed as his influences. But as ubiquitous as he became, he can take credit for at least one unambiguously good deed- convincing the Weinstein Brothers to give Wong Kar-wai's gorgeous Chungking Express (the source of last week's quotation) an American release. In doing so, he introduced many a budding film nerd- myself included- to the magical career of Wong Kar-wai, as well as to an Asian art cinema that previously took a backseat to John Woo and Tsui Hark-helmed actioners on the world film scene. While In the Mood for Love seems to get the most critical love of any of his films nowadays, Chungking Express remains my personal favorite. Congrats to those who guessed it.

Two-thirds of the way through the round, and there are still plenty of contenders for the prizes. Here's this week's quote, the shortest of this round so far:

"You're working for me now."

Submit your guesses to famouslastwords@nerve.com. If you need to brush up on the rules of the game, click click here, and remember, all submissions must be received by next Wednesday night at 11:59 PM Eastern. Good luck!

Le Bon Temps Roule!

Phil Nugent — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It's Fat Tuesday, which marks the noisy, beer-stained conclusion to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Sadly, most of you who visit this site are trapped at your jobs or classrooms right now, and while we could address ourselves exclusively to those now celebrating in the Pelican State, most of them are probably too drunk to read. We'll just settle for mentally sending them some love rays and hope those in the French Quarter remember that as soon as the clock turns to twelve tonight, those nice policemen on horseback whose job it is to clear the streets will start unsheathing their billy clubs. For the rest of you, we'll just remind you that there have been a number of motion pictures that tried to tap into the mysterious beauty and happy vibe of the city that care forgot. Most of these movies stank like week-old gumbo, but here's a few that might make for an enjoyable carnival day rental:

PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)

This thriller starts out on the New Orleans docks, where a tough named Blackie (played by a hulking, gaunt-featured newcomer to movies billed as "Walter Jack Palance") murders a guy who's fresh off the boat who looks as if he's only got about five minutes to live anyway. When the coroner confirms that the dead man was suffering from pneumonic plague, Richard Widmark (as a U.S. Public Health officer) and a cop played by Paul Douglas have to track down Palance, his whimpering sidekick Zero Mostel, and anyone else who may have been in contact with him, while keeping things quiet so as to prevent a panic. The director, Elia Kazan, who a year later would make one of the great movies set in New Orleans when he transferred Tennesee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire to film, shot this movie in actual New Orleans locations, which means that, in addition to its virtues as a crackerjack entertainment — which are considerable — it also has the fascination of serving as a semi-documentary record of the city as it was more than half a century ago. Fun fact: shortly after directing Mostel in this picture, Kazan testified against him in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, thus helping to get the actor blacklisted.

HARD TIMES (1975)

This period piece, set during the Depression, was the first film directed by its screenwriter, Walter Hill. It's a vehicle for Charles Bronson, in what is almost certainly the best movie and probably the best performance of his '70s period as a top-billed international star; he plays a soft-spoken drifter who falls in with a gambler (James Coburn) and begins competing in bare-knuckle fistfights that are thrown together to give the locals something to bet on. You get a sense of what the leisurely pace of life does to you in New Orleans from this film: for an action movie, it has a unusually slow tempo, as if Hill were a little drunk on the atmosphere and needed to take care to remember to keep putting his next foot in front of the other in the right order. But it's so flavorful and lovingly crafted that it's never boring. Strother Martin, who wears a white suit and a moustache that make him look more than ever like Tennessee Williams's Mini-Me, plays Coburn's sidekick, who tends Bronson's wounds; he explains his unlicensed medical status by saying that "in the fourth year of my studies, a small black cloud appeared on the campus. I departed under it." (The young Becky Allen, a mainstay of New Orleans theater for many years, has a small, good appearance as his dinner date.)

Eighteen years later, another talented action director, John Woo, would come to New Orleans to shoot his first American film, Hard Target, starring Jean-Claude Damme (as "Chance Boudreaux"), who stumbles across an operation, led by Lance Henriksen, to organize The Most Dangerous Game-style hunts of displaced homeless men on the streets of the city. At one point, Henriksen tells someone that "it's no accident we're in New Orleans... There's always some unhappy corner of the globe where we can ply our trade." So I guess the filmmakers deserve some kind of credit for not sucking up to the local Tourist Board. Oddly enough, this was not the first movie that tried to account for Van Damme's Belgian accent by insisting that his character was supposed to be a Cajun.

THE BIG EASY (1986)

This fast-talking crime movie is one that New Orleans itself has always had a love-hate relationship with. It's a cartoon of the city's image, complete with crooked cops, weird accents (the hero, a detective played by Dennis Quaid, is meant to be Cajun-Irish), and such lines as, "Who do I look like, the Grand Marshall of the Mardi Gras?" But on its own endearingly unambitious terms, it's often a fun cartoon, with a memorable little turn-on of a bedroom scene between Quaid and Ellen Barkin (who, when Quaid sticks his hand up her skirt, unrolls her smile as if she'd been wondering all her life what was in there), and funny turns by Lisa Jane Persky, Grace Zabriskie, and local icon John Goodman. There's even a brief appearance (as an inexplicably surly magnet salesman) by Peter Gabb, who starred in a Tulane University production of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves in which this writer played a nun, a performance hailed by one critic as having been "worth trying, I guess." This movie is especially worth seeing for Charles Ludlam's appearance as Quaid's lawyer, identified at one point as "da man dat got da governor acquitted." Ludlam, the founder of New York's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, was a god in his own specialized field of high-camp, Pop Art theatrical farce, but he didn't leave behind much on film, and by the time The Big Easy opened, he had died of AIDS. Though Ludlam was a Yankee, his joyously broad, eye-rolling cameo specifically captures the kind of fun that blossoms in New Orleans like few things I've ever seen.

TUNE IN TOMORROW... (1990)

This one's really freaky, and definitely a matter of taste. Fans of hardcore silliness will find a lot in it to like. Even its bloodlines are surreal: the screenplay, by the British novelist William Boyd (An Ice Cream War; A Good Man in Africa), is based on Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which was set in Lima, Peru in the 1950s, but with the action shifted to New Orleans in the same period. It was directed by Jon Amiel, a British TV and movie director who was then fairly hot after coming off the Dennis Potter-scripted miniseries The Singing Detective, and who was on his way, after this film came out, to never being fairly hot again. It stars Peter Falk as "Pedro Carmichael", a radio soap-opera writer who takes a creatorly interest in the forbidden romance developing between hot-blooded man-child Keanu Reeves and the ripe, womanly Barbara Hershey. The movie, which really takes off in the sections where Pedro's radio show fantasies are acted out by a group of actors that includes Peter Gallagher, Elizabeth McGovern, Dan Hedaya (in an eyepatch), Hope Lange, Buck Henry, and local embarrassment John Larroquette, also features a terrific original score by Wynton Marsalis, who can be seen performing with his band in a nightclub sequence. If you ever get the chance, give it a shot: it sure won't remind you of much else that you've seen before.

Trailer Review: Red Cliff

John Constantine — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:03:00 GMT

After 2003’s Ben Affleck vehicle Paycheck, the worst of the Philip K. Dick adaptations, John Woo disappeared. He took his guns and his doves and seemingly went back up the mountain to live out his days in peace, producing movies and not directing. Who could blame him? Woo spent close to a decade making American action trash when a new generation of Hong Kong action — movies that owe more than a little to Woo’s legacy — gained mainstream acceptance in the same market. Looks like John’s coming back down from the mountain with Red Cliff, his first Chinese-language film since Hard-Boiled. From this trailer, the movie looks very promising, a historical epic that eschews the neon bombast of recent Asian entries in the genre and replaces it with western grit. Despite the apparent influence of Ridley Scott though, Cliff also looks to capture some of the classic melodrama of '60s and '70s Hong Kong historical action. Here’s hoping it’s as good as it looks here.

You can check out the trailer at Yahoo Taiwan here.

It’s good to have you back, John.

And Now For Something Relatively Lowbrow

Peter Smith — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Sick of reading about '80s toy franchises being adapted into two hour long Mountain Dew commercials here on the 'Grab? Too bad! Unlike the flood of '80s remakes announced made in the wake of Transformers, this just-leaked animated pitch for a new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe movie from 2004 is definitely not getting made. This flick might have been good, trashy fun, considering John Woo was attached to direct. From the looks of it, it would’ve been 300 but with more science-fiction and people riding giant cats while fighting skeleton men. (Read: Totally awesome.) — John Constantine