The Screengrab : king kong

The Last Morning Deal Report

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

A word of warning: just because this is our last Morning Deal Report at the Screengrab doesn’t mean Hollywood is going to stop announcing ridiculous projects. You’ll just have to find out about them somewhere else. I wish I could say we’ve saved the best for last, but we can only work with what they give us.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz will reunite for James Mangold’s Wichita. It is not the story of a lineman who’s still on the line. “The script has been through many machinations, but the most recent drafts were done by Scott Frank, with Mangold currently fine-tuning the script with Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island). Two-hander has several action scenes. Cruise will play a secret agent who pops in and out of the life of a single woman,” Variety reports.

Kevin Smith has found another pair of dicks. “Seann William Scott and Adam Brody are joining Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Warner Bros.' A Couple of Dicks,” Smith’s new buddy action comedy, per The Hollywood Reporter. Smith did not write the script, which is by script Robb and Mark Cullen, and “follows a maverick cop (Willis) and his partner (Morgan) who, while tracking a valuable stolen baseball card, tangle with a memorabilia-obsessed gangster and rescue a Mexican beauty who holds the key to millions in laundered drug money.”

Also, there will be another Batman movie, another Star Trek, another James Bond, and at some point, probably another King Kong remake. Save us the aisle seat!

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Arnold Schwarzenegger in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991)

Why do people keep ruining James Cameron’s perfectly good endings? First, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley goes through hell to save poor little Newt in Aliens, only to have friggin’ David Fincher whack them both in Alien3 (because, of course, it’s much cooler to kill off beloved, memorable characters than, say, to create interesting new ones). Then, in T2, Cameron finished off the story he began in the original Terminator with a scene of noble, sacrificial self-immolation by the villain-turned-hero/father figure Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 (a.k.a. Arnold Schwarzenegger) that clearly implies the threat of a future evil robot dystopia has been averted...and a decade later, we’re right back where we started with Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. As it turns out, Arnie didn’t have to lower himself into that vat of molten lead after all (a scene I could only illustrate with the clip above, since every other version and parody on YouTube has embedding mysteriously disabled, possibly by Skynet). But the scene nevertheless makes my list of great deaths (even though cyborgs can't technically die) because, even more than the hyper-stylized imagery of 300 or Sin City, the fiery shot of the doomed cyborg descending towards oblivion captures the operatic melodrama at the heart of the modern comic book ethos as well as any Mexican standoff in the days when epic grand finales were Sergio Leone’s stock-in-trade. (AO)

Random Thief in AMERICAN HISTORY X (1998)

There are death scenes, there are gruesome death scenes, there are over-the-top nasty and ridiculous death scenes, and then there’s the unforgettable murder perpetrated by Edward Norton’s white supremacist in Tony Kaye’s American History X. In the ghastly attack, Norton’s skinhead confronts three African-American gentlemen trying to break into his car by shooting at them, killing one and injuring another. While spitting racial epithets, he forces the wounded man to place his open mouth on the street curb, and then stomps on the back of the man’s head, thereby fatally splitting his jaw (and face). Twelve years after first seeing the film, the mere thought of the moment still makes me cringe. (NS)

Jean-Paul Belmondo in BREATHLESS (1960) & PIERROT LE FOU (1965)

If you ever sit down to a compile a list of memorable death scenes from the movies -- an activity that I recommend, by the way -- you may find that they divide neatly into two categories, the quiet and reflective (typified at one end of the scale by the end of McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and the wild and flashy (summed up at the other end by James Cagney in, well, anything). In the films that bookend their period of collaboration, Jean-Luc Godard and his star Belmondo hit both extremes. In their breakthrough hit, Breathless, Belmondo, lying in the street with a bullet in his hide, came to terms with his happily misspent existence and enjoyed telling off his girlfriend one last time. Five years later, in Pierrot le Fou, the older and wiser man bids farewell to this cruel world (and to Godard's universe) by breaking out the boom sticks. (PN)

Godard's love of the purity of cinematic worlds is at its apex here. Pierrot Le Fou is a lusciously colored, beautifully shot film about how films -- along with other pop culture trappings -- steal logic from seemingly intelligent people. His characters vacillate between complex and ridiculous. Emotions are heightened without warning, the highbrow ideas of the film are treated to the most lowbrow signifiers, and suddenly Anna Karina is bursting into lovely song. When Belmondo, as Ferdinand/Pierrot, decides to off himself in the most dadaist way, he suddenly seems to realize that the absurdity that holds him in thrall is about to kill him. Ah, but it's too late. Such is the life of the modern man, I suppose: hypnotized by stories and images until the mere fact of living one's life is the same as starring in a fascinating and bizarre movie. The drama will kill you. (HC)

Janet Leigh in PSYCHO (1960)

Arguably cinema’s most famous death, Janet Leigh’s shower scene in Psycho remains a classic for a variety of reasons: the unexpectedness of the incident; the chutzpah Hitchcock exhibits in killing off his heroine midway through the story; the terrifying notion of being attacked unexpectedly and while defenseless; and the editing of the scene itself, a master class in audio-visual synchronicity that manages to convey a monumental amount of violence and bloodshed while never once showing the murderer’s knife making contact with Leigh’s skin. Plain and simple, it’s the death scene by which all others must be judged. (NS)

King Kong in KING KONG (1933)

For pure iconography, few cinematic sights hold a candle to that of King Kong battling aircrafts while clinging to the Empire State Building. Yet while the gargantuan ape’s subsequent fatal plummet to the NYC streets below is, ostensibly, a “happy” ending, what’s remarkable about the climax is how melancholy it plays. Carl Denham may believe “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast,” but the truth is that he – and we, as consumers who crave the type of entertainment sold by hucksters like Denham – are truly responsible for the fallen beast’s death, a truth that lingers long after the final fade to black. (NS)

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs

Bloody Valentines: The Worst Relationships In Cinema History (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:30:00 GMT

BURT & LINDA PUGACH, CRAZY LOVE (2007)

If you never saw this documentary by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens (or the talk show promotional tour by its subjects prior to its release), here’s the set-up: already-married New York City attorney Burt Pugach had an affair with a younger woman named Linda Riss, and when she broke it off, he contracted goons to blind her by throwing lye in her face. But wait, it gets even more romantic! After serving 14 years in prison for his crime, Pugach hooked up with Riss again, and eventually the two kooky lovebirds got married. Now here’s the depressing part: if you didn’t know their history, the kvetchy, passive-aggressive old couple portrayed in the film's contemporary interview segments could be ANY miserable old couple stuck in the comfortable rut of a relatively loveless marriage. So for all you dudes out there who think passion equals love and all you ladies with a thing for the bad boys, Crazy Love is a grimly humorous corrective.

MAE & JIMMY DOYLE, VIRTUE (1932)

Far from DVD but recently restored in a pristine new print by Sony (it's a start), Virtue is a stellar script by frequent Capra collaborator Robert Riskin with a premise that hasn't dated one bit: if a woman comes to a relationship with way more sexual experience than a man and it makes him insecure, paranoid and jealous, is there any way for him to get over that and save the relationship? Mae (Carole Lombard) is a former streetwalker who falls in love with cabdriver Jimmy Doyle (Pat O'Brien) while working behind the drivers' lunch-counter; Doyle's a tough-talking he-man woman-hater, but Mae wins him over. When they get back from their honeymoon day at Coney Island, the cops are there to arrest her for coming back to NYC after her last arrest; Jimmy vouches for her, but after the cops leave, the real test begins. Jimmy's ridiculously suspicious and obviously the walking wounded, his pride and suspicion a relationship toxin. Unfortunately, there's only so far a Pre-Code movie can go, and rather than having Jimmy and Mae work their problems out in open dialogue, Riskin has to resort to a tricksy but stupid melodramatic murder plot to clear the air. Still, Virtue is superior to, say, Chasing Amy, because being a former streetwalker is a much better metaphor for sexual inequality in a relationship than converting a freakin' lesbian. I mean c'mon. There's no clips online, so enjoy the creepy home footage above of Lombard and Clark Gable doing nothing much in particular.

ANN DARROW & KONG, KING KONG (1933)

When Peter Jackson remade Kong, he beefed up the sympathetic vibes between ape and woman, even including an Edward Scissorhands-ish ice-rink moment at the end; it wasn't beauty killed the beast, but society. Not the case in the original, where a shrieking Fay Wray doesn't realize (as someone once pointed out, and I can't remember how) that Kong is, all things considered, far from the worst thing that could happen to her: he keeps her safe on the island and would never, ever drop her from the Empire State Building. But no: she shrills and is generally totally ungrateful. Naomi Watts and Kong are actually kind of a cute couple; Wray and Kong, forget about it. Someone thought the archaic and perfectly-preserved, unreconstructed attitudes of the original weren't enlightening enough and edited a really bad "modern trailer" for it; it's above.

ALGY LONGWORTH & GWEN, BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKES BACK (1934)

An immensely amusing movie 20th Century Fox apparently never bought the permanent rights to the source material for — hence insanely hard to see — Bulldog Drummond is embodied for an encore by Ronald Colman, who'd already embodied H.C. 'Sapper' McNeile's emblem of British charm and resourcefulness in 1929. But his companion Algy was being played by Charles Butterworth for the first time. As the movie opens, it's Algy's wedding day to Gwen (Una Merkel), but their honeymoon night keeps getting interrupted by Bulldog's murder investigations and tanglings with generic sinister Oriental Prince Achmed (Warner Oland). Bulldog seems like a man of the world (because he's been out of Britain), but everyone else is asexual and stiff-upper-lip; Algy seems either fatalistically resigned to his wedding night being interrupted or actively looking for excuses to get out of it. (His bride is American, hence presumably experienced, which implicitly adds to the panic.) His final line at the film's final interruption — the relationship is never so much as close to consummation — is astonishing: "Perhaps you and I will be happy in our Platonic little way." They're the most sexually trapped married couple ever.

ED & LOU AVERY, BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956)

The mismatch between Ed (James Mason) and Lou Avery (Barbara Rush) is a geographical one set up in casting: even if you don't know that Mason's British (and not terribly good at concealing his accent) and Rush is a corn-fed Coloradan, you can sense a mismatch from the opening moments, when Ed announces everyone they had over for their suburban party was "dull" and failed to say anything witty, surprising or interesting. When Ed starts binging on cortisone and turns into a raving psychotic with delusions of grandeur, it merely confirms that there's no way he should be in the same suburban house as the rest of America. He needs to get back to where he belongs. Nicholas Ray's movie was a flop when it came out, and now it's a kind of overrated cult classic, but it's still compellingly sardonic stuff.

DAVE HIRSH & GINNIE MOOREHEAD, SOME CAME RUNNING (1958)

When Dave Hirsh (Frank Sinatra) wakes up on a bus back in his hometown, he's got a wicked hangover and a girl he doesn't remember having picked up, Ginnie Moorehead (Shirley MacLaine). He sends her packing, but she keeps hanging around, and eventually they're a couple, out of intertia as much as anything: Hirsh wants to do the Right Thing, and Ginnie is so pathologically needy she's hurt by the slightest rejection. What Dave doesn't realize is that doing the right thing is the wrong thing for both of them; [MAJOR SPOILER] Ginnie ends up dead, and Dave ends up with more guilt than he knows what to do with. Ironically, in reality Sinatra made sure MacLaine would get her big death scene so she could have her big star breakthrough ("Look, I want the kid to get killed, she'll get an Oscar nomination," he reportedly said. "I don't care about my role."), and she got it. But on-screen, they're a couple trapped together by both of their faults: her needs, his unwillingness to be a bastard when it has to be done. Short-term kindness is long-term cruelty.

ROSEMARY & GUY WOODHOUSE, ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)

This one's a literal from-hell: what could be worse than having a husband who'll trade you in to a Satanic coven in exchange for a boost for his acting career? I've long maintained Rosemary's Baby is actually a black comedy — it has more nervous laughs than most real comedies — but there's no denying that anyone married to John Cassavetes is in for the long haul in general. Mia Farrow just gets an especially bad break.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Vadim Rizov

Unwatchable #55: “APE”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

A*P*E (also known as Hideous Mutant, Super Kong and, um, Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla) was released in 1976, the same year as the Dino De Laurentiis remake of King Kong. The conspiracy theorist inside me would like to think that De Laurentiis secretly financed A*P*E so that his incredibly fake-looking Kong wouldn’t look so bad by comparison. In reality, A*P*E is a South Korean-American co-production with no apparent connection to the De Laurentiis empire. But I’m allowed to have my suspicions.

The first five minutes of A*P*E set a standard for gut-busting awfulness that few movies could sustain – and indeed, the remainder of the movie is a routinely terrible Kong ripoff. But oh, those first five minutes! It begins with a title card thanking the United States Army for its cooperation in the making of this motion picture. Wha? The United States Army cooperated with this? For what possible reason? Did anyone in charge read a script? You figure there has to be one guy in the Army who has the task of reading all the scripts submitted by producers looking to borrow some tanks and helicopters. (And by the way, how did this guy get that job? Is his brother fighting on the front lines while he sits at a desk reading Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla? Must make for a fun time at Thanksgiving.) Maybe this guy just wanted to assure us all that the Army would be on the case if we’re ever attacked by a giant ape. Or maybe there was some misunderstanding with the Korean producers over the use of the word “Kong.” Something was lost in translation, I’m almost certain.

Anyway, A*P*E skips all the usual tedious nonsense about assembling a crew, chartering a freighter to the island, dealing with the natives and capturing the giant ape. You know, all the stuff that took up about seven hours worth of the Peter Jackson King Kong remake. As the movie begins, we’re already aboard the ship with the drugged 36-foot-ape locked down in the hold. But not for long! The ape awakes, crashes through the deck, and – for reasons I could not discern from the mise-en-scene presented by director Paul Leder (I Dismember Mama) – the entire boat explodes. Apparently the freighter has been cruising along in about fifteen feet of water, because the ape now stands, waist-deep in the ocean, and dances with a rubber shark. (Here is a clip of his escape, which sadly, cuts out right before the shark-dancing.)

Eventually ape defeats shark and reaches land. Specifically, he makes it to Korea, where American movie star Marilyn Baker (Joanna Kerns) is making her latest picture. (From the clips we see, she appears to be starring in the story of a woman in constant danger of being raped.) Ape and actress are destined for a rendezvous, but unlike Kong, this big gorilla does not appear to be a misunderstood gentle soul. Actually, he’s kind of a dick. He rampages around willy-nilly, knocking over schools and hospitals and whatnot. He defies physics by being 36 feet tall and yet towering over four-story buildings. When the inevitable helicopter attack arrives in the final reel, the ape deploys a rude gesture the original Kong could never have gotten away with.

When the beast meets his violent demise, his carpet-remnant fur rippling in the breeze, Marilyn’s weenie boyfriend gets the last word. “He was just too big for a small world like ours.” Poignance, thy name is A*P*E.

Previously on Unwatchable:
56. Araf
57. Phat Girlz
58. Ed
59. Don’t Go in the Woods…Alone!
60. Carry On Columbus

DVD Digest for January 6, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week brings a cavalcade of crap from the lean seasons of 2008. But if you’re willing to wade through it, there are treasures to be found.

DVD of the Week: The best news in a relatively slow week is the much-anticipated arrival of two very different films by the great British director Michael Powell. For years, fans of Powell and his longtime collaborator Emeric Pressburger have yearned for a DVD of one of their greatest films, 1946’s Stairway to Heaven, also known as A Matter of Life and Death. Finally, the film has arrived in a new pressing from Sony, complete with an introduction by longtime Powell fan and friend Martin Scorsese and an interview with film scholar Ian Christie. But wait, there’s more! Paired in the set with Stairway is Powell’s late-period film Age of Consent. I have yet to see the film, which by most accounts is fairly minor Powell. Yet how can one possibly resist a movie that stars James Mason and a luscious young (and often-nude) Helen Mirren, set against some lovely Australian settings? Not me, that’s for sure.

This week’s most notable recent releases on DVD are a pair of 2008’s highest-profile pot-themed movies- David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express (Sony, also Blu-Ray) and Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Also this week is the fiction debut of documentarian Jessica Yu, Ping Pong Playa (Image, also Blu-Ray), plus a quintet of shame: Nicolas Cage in Bangkok Dangerous (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Vin Diesel in Babylon A.D. (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Pacino and DeNiro cashing their paychecks in Righteous Kill (Anchor Bay, also Blu-Ray); Disaster Movie (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), the latest in the seemingly deathless cycle of cut-rate parodies from the Friedberg/Seltzer team; and the right-wing spoof/jeremiad An American Carol (Universal). Whew.

This week’s big TV on DVD is Battlestar Galactica Season 4.0 (Universal). And in Blu-Ray only news, this week sees the release of Peter Jackson’s King Kong (Universal), the pigskin drama Friday Night Lights (Universal), and Season 1 of Showtime’s Dexter (Paramount).

Set Your DVR! December 29, 2008 - January 5, 2009

Hayden Childs — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Ugh. The post-Xmas blues are coming on strong. Hell, let's drink to baby new year 2009 and get it over with! Here's the DVR-worthy scoop for the coming week. Times are Central/Eastern and overnight movies go with the previous day.

Monday, December 29:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is all wacky postmodernism, while The Sweet Hereafter is quite the opposite. The Player is somewhere in-between, but a lot funnier.

1:30/2:30 pm: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 pm: The Sweet Hereafter on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The Player on IFC.
3:05/4:05 am: The Sweet Hereafter on IFC.

Tuesday, December 30:

The penultimate day of 2008 is all about the past and the future! Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil is a topsy-turvy Civil War film, while Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is not just the greatest Western, but the greatest film that this country has ever produced. CQ is about a lost young screenwriter in swinging Europe during the 60s making a Barbarella-like retro-future flick. Soylent Green is, uh, people. Heaven's Gate is an amazing, dull something.

4:30/5:30 pm: Ride With the Devil on AMC.
7/8 pm: The Wild Bunch on AMC.
7:30/8:30 pm: CQ on IFC.
9/10 pm: Soylent Green on TCM.
1/2 am: Heaven’s Gate on TCM.

Wednesday, December 31:

It's the last day of the year, spend the sober part of it with America's (fictionalized) history. Stagecoach, the film that Orson Welles studied to learn how to direct movies, is surprisingly claustrophobic, given that it was shot in Monument Valley, and one of the most influential films ever made. And of course you've seen the two Sergio Leone movies before, but there's never a bad reason to watch one of the Man With No Name films.

5/6 am: Stagecoach on TCM.
9/10 am: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly on AMC.
1/2 pm: A Fistful of Dollars on AMC.

Thursday, January 1:

If you find yourself up early (or late), The Coen Brother's gangster film Miller's Crossing is the best movie they've made. TCM has a Cary Grant film festival running during the day, with the screwball classics Bringing Up Baby, The Awful Truth, and It Happened One Night (there's others, too, but these are the best). In prime time, TCM is running the original King Kong, which is an awe-inspiring movie. And Reservoir Dogs is, of course, the movie that launched Madonna's career.

8:15/9:15 am: Miller’s Crossing on IFC.
10/11 am: Bringing Up Baby on TCM.
2:30/3:30 pm: Miller’s Crossing on IFC.
3:15/4:15 pm: The Awful Truth on TCM.
5/6 pm: It Happened One Night on TCM.
7/8 pm: King Kong (1933) on TCM.
9:15/10:15 pm: Reservoir Dogs on IFC.
2:35/3:35 am: Reservoir Dogs on IFC.

Friday, January 2:

While IFC has the weirdness of Blue Velvet, TCM is running a Randolph Scott film festival. The first two were directed by Budd Boetticher and are great, sometimes dark, versions of the classic Western style. I don't know anything about The Cariboo Trail. Western Union was directed by Fritz Lang. Excuse me, I mean Fritz "Kick Ass" Lang.

6:25/7:25 pm: Blue Velvet on IFC.
7/8 pm: The Tall T on TCM.
8:30/9:30 pm: Ride Lonesome on TCM.
10/11 pm: The Cariboo Trail on TCM.
11:30 pm/12:30 am: Western Union on TCM.
2:15/3:15 am: Blue Velvet on IFC.

Saturday, January 3:

Saturday doesn't have much. The 47 Ronin is the first part of an epic samurai tale. I'm guessing the second half will run the following Saturday. And Modern Times is the classic Chaplin film.

7/8 am: The 47 Ronin, Part I on IFC.
7/8 pm: Modern Times on TCM.

Sunday, January 4:

Burden of Dreams is the documentary about the ambitious dreamer Werner Herzog slowly going insane while trying to film Fitzcarraldo, a movie about an ambitious dreamer who slowly goes insane. Harlan County, USA is a documentary about a mining strike in Kentucky in the 70s. After watching this movie, you may join the IWW. And Paranoid Park is Gus Van Sant's 2008 film about skateboarders and murder. It's in the vein of his Death Trilogy rather than his more conventional style, and it's topping many Best Of 2008 lists.

7/8 am: Burden of Dreams on IFC.
8:45/9:45 am Harlan County, USA on IFC.
12:05/1:05 pm: Burden of Dreams on IFC.
5:30/6:30 pm: Paranoid Park on IFC.

Monday, January 5:

Back to the grindstone again! In this case, the grindstone will be played by Andrei Tarkovsky's experimental film Solaris and Michael Winterbottom's trippy history of Tony Wilson and the Manchester scene, 24 Hour Party People.

1:35/2:35 pm: Solaris on IFC.
4:30/5:30 pm: 24 Hour Party People on IFC.

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

According to the famous quote, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.

Sadly, Ms. Rogers didn’t make our Top 25 list, but the sentiment holds true for the Leading Ladies who did: after all, like the actors in our recent posting of The Top 25 Leading Men of All Time, the following matinee idols managed to fascinate and captivate over the course of varied careers with astonishing on-screen performances (and off-screen personas)...yet they also achieved their success in a notoriously sexist, looks-obsessed business with a tendency to relegate women to underimagined wife and girlfriend parts...

...or, to quote Goldie Hawn’s actress character in The First Wives’ Club, there are usually three stages to a woman’s Hollywood career: "Ingénue, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.”

But not always, thankfully, as we here at the Screengrab hereby celebrate with our salute to 25 celluloid dames (some of them actual Dames) who defined and redefined our notions of film and femininity...backwards, forwards, up and down, in high heels, cowboy boots and everything in between.

25. NAOMI WATTS (1968 - )

Oh yes, Ms. Watts absolutely kills in the above scene from Mulholland Dr. But she has had a bit of a quality-control problem since, appearing in The Ring and its sequel, 21 Grams, Stay, King Kong, and the unnecessary remake of Funny Games. All of these movies seem risky and high-concept in the abstract, but all of them hedge their bets in some way and fail to deliver on their promise. They’re good enough for what they are, but none of them reach the greatness they suggest. Naomi Watts, however, completely throws herself into her roles. You can see the movie that could have been when she’s on-screen...if you can see anything but her, that is.

24. (TIE) JULIA ROBERTS (1967 - ) & JESSICA LANGE (1949 - )

In The Player, Robert Altman’s poison pen love letter to Hollywood, there’s a running gag about Julia Roberts: every producer pitches every project with her in mind, and even the integrity-bound screenwriter who vows that his “serious” indie film will feature “no stars” eventually gives in, leading to a charmingly self-deprecating film-within-a-film cameo by, yes, Julia Roberts. And though her wattage may have dimmed in recent years (along with the general star power of human actors versus, say, Chihuahuas and Decepticons), she’s still the current reigning champ of modern female movie stars in terms of her career Trifecta of salary (the first female star to crack the $20 million mark), box office clout (over $2 billion + international star power) and industry respect (with multiple awards, nominations and a Best Actress Oscar for her dynamo performance as the titular (get it?) legal clerk of Erin Brockovich). It hasn’t all been hosannas, of course: for all her fame, Roberts hasn’t really given that many memorable performances, and her star turns can range from somnambulant snoozers (The Pelican Brief, Mary Reilly) and romantic comedy fluff (Runaway Bride) to inexplicable appearances in unmitigated disasters like The Mexican and Mona Lisa Smile. But when she’s in the zone, her charisma and presence are formidable: many who loathed Pretty Woman on principle were nevertheless charmed (against their will!) by Roberts’ hooker with a heart of Amex gold, and when she lets herself be likably unlikable (as in her bittersweet chocolate romantic comedies Notting Hill and My Best Friend’s Wedding), she hints at a largely untapped range that may yet blossom in the second half of her already impressive career.

Lange made her movie debut in the 1976 King Kong remake. An actual look at the footage reveals that she was perfectly charming as a sweet but not-too-bright piece of fluff with vague aspirations to stardom, but the movie was used as a piñata by critics, and many of them went so far as to suggest that if Lange was convincing as a dumb blonde, that must mean that she wasn't acting. Badly burned, she didn't appear in another movie until Bob Fosse cast her as some kind of Wilhelmina Agency Angel of Death in 1979's All That Jazz. Her performance there was more kindly treated -- call it the lowered expectations, or Sarah Palin effect -- but it wasn't until she paired off against Jack Nicholson with an unexpectedly fiery performance in 1981's The Postman Always Rings Twice that people began to suspect that they just might have a live one. She followed that up in 1982 with a classic romantic-comedy lead in Tootsie and a performance as the doomed movie actress Frances Farmer (in Frances) that snapped a few necks. Her best work since then has include her performance as Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams, her end-of-the-sisterhood trio in Crimes of the Heart, and her troubled, trouble-making military wife in Tony Richardson's Blue Sky, for which she won an Academy Award. (Sadly, the movie, which was completed in 1991, got caught up in the bankruptcy of its funding studio, Orion, and didn't make it to theaters until 1994, by which time Richardson had died.) Little that she has done since that has been especially worthy of her, though she has appeared onstage in London and on Broadway in Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie. She is currently set to play the ruined society matriarch "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale (with Drew Barrymore as Little Edie) in a movie based on the Maysles brothers documentary Grey Gardens.

23. (TIE) SISSY SPACEK (1949 - ) & JANE FONDA (1937 - )

Sissy Spacek was the amoral girl-on-the-cusp-of-womanhood in three of the defining films of the '70s: Badlands, Carrie, and 3 Women (yeah, you read that right: I said 3 Women was a defining film of the '70s). She could have quit after that, but she moved on to playing maternal figures in the movies. Her eyes look different now. She’s lost the shock that made her seem so delicate and young and precious back then, but that shock was always hiding something else, something weirder and harder to define. Her only recent movie where she's recaptured the shade of her younger self was The Straight Story, in which she played a woman who was a little slow. The Straight Story is also one of the very few movies she’s made that’s worth a damn since 1977, so go figure.

Fonda's offscreen reputation as a Vietnam-era leftist political scold has largely overshadowed her legacy as an actress. If there's any justice in this, it has less to do with her right to express her opinions, however embarrassingly, in what passes for her private life, than with her misguided decision to waste what might have been her peak years as an artist on half-baked scripts that she seemed to select on the basis of whatever political message they seemed to be editorializing, whether it was the legacy of Vietnam or nuclear power or women's rights in the workplace. In the 1980s, she didn't seem to know what to do with herself, and she basically retired after an unpleasant run-in with Vietnam vets who picketed the set of the awful Stanley & Iris, in which she taught Robert De Niro to read. But if there was only a short window of time in which Fonda was an actress first and at the top of her game, what she did during that time would still qualify her for any Mount Rushmore of American movie actresses. She spent most of her first ten years in movies establishing herself as an exceptionally saucy, cuddly comic actress: she's a hoot, and a turn-on, even in Barabarella, one of the ugliest-looking rip-off jobs that a pretentious French twat ever talked his trusting American wife into starring in. When her tobacco-road inflection on the line "Essence of man?" and the scene where she shorts out the orgasm machine failed to give Henry Fonda a fatal heart attack, she went about any daughter's life's work another way, becoming "radicalized" offscreen while pouring all that angry, room-clearing energy into starring roles in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Klute, two of the least sentimental, most hard-edged, beautifully detailed portraits of doomed women of the New Hollywood era (or anytime). Her Bree Daniels in Klute, the New York prostitute who has total control over her clients and zero control of anything else in her life, remains one of the most perfectly executed and daring star performances in movies.

22. JOAN CRAWFORD (1905-1977)

It’s a testament to the sheer power of Joan Crawford’s personality that the mere act of portraying her can wreck a career: Faye Dunaway, once one of Hollywood’s most promising stars, took on the job in the infamous Mommie Dearest, and she was never the same again. It’s a cliché to say that some famous person is less a human being and more a force of nature, but it’s a cliché that was invented with Joan Crawford in mind: once a drifting youngster who only wanted to be a dancer, she got her hooks into Hollywood at a young age (becoming famous as a flapper even before the sound era made her a superstar), and she never let go for a second. In everything from acting to dancing to business to parenthood to sitting on the board of directors of Pepsi-Cola, Crawford insisted on running the game her way, and woe betide anyone who crossed her. For such a stunning screen presence – named by the AFI as the greatest female star of all time! – Crawford wasn’t the best there was at anything. She was an above-average dancer, but not a great one; she had a unique look – all flashing eyes and floating hair – but she wasn’t one of the screen’s greatest beauties; and she could put in some fine performances (witness Mildred Pierce and Strange Cargo for proof), but she was an unreliable box office draw and never one of the greatest actresses of her day. Indeed, as with her doppelganger Bette Davis, she’s often treasured as much for her bad performances, like Sudden Fear, as for her good ones. But there is probably no one in Hollywood history, male or female, who was so commanding, so arresting, so utterly implacable when she was onscreen: Joan Crawford had more presence than anyone who had come before or has been seen since, and if she wasn’t going to take over the world with her acting, then goddamn it, she at least was not going to be ignored.

21. JULIE CHRISTIE (1948 - )

Julie Christie! The rumors are true! Wait, no. Terry met Julie at Waterloo Station every Friday night. Hold it, she wasn’t just the subject of rock songs? Julie Christie could actually act? Yowza. Actually, even if the only movie she'd ever made was McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Julie Christie would still be one of my favorite actresses. But she’s always great, even when the movie isn’t. And despite the openness in her face (not to mention that incredible perpetual pout), she always brings a sense of mystery and intelligence to her roles, giving them a fully rounded life, though we sometimes only see a snippet.

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

Contributors: Hayden Childs, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Reviews by Request: War of the Gargantuas (1966, Ishiro Honda)

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Note: Beginning this week, I’m changing the format for Reviews by Request in an attempt to allow more people to participate in the requesting process. See the note at the end of the review for details.

Special thanks to reader Kent M. Beeson for requesting this week’s review, of which he said, “I'd love to hear what you think, but I fear the words will get stuck in your throat.” Hope I did it justice, Kent.

As sophisticated as I like to pretend my moviegoing tastes are, there’s still a part of me that loves old-school Japanese monster movies with a childlike glee. I’m guessing a lot of this has to do with the monsters themselves, which without fail tend to make me want to emit loud, Harry Knowles-like cheers of “man in suit! Yeeeeeah!!!” But while I (usually) refrain from doing this, there’s still something about this antiquated technique that takes me back to my youth. In an age when practically any monster imaginable can be created on a computer, it still proves tricky for FX whizzes to really give their CGI beasties a real presence in the action.

Now, some people out there aren’t as keen on old-school monsters as I am, presumably because they’re still in the thrall of the new and the flashy. But in my experience, it’s rare to find a digital monster with even half the personality of the man-in-suit creatures of yore. Peter Jackson’s Kong came close, as did the slimy baddie in The Host, but most of them are too graceful and weightless to really work in the same way as, say, the classic incarnations on Godzilla. By actually dressing a person up in an oversized rubber costume, a monster takes on a kind of imperfect human physicality that’s nearly impossible to duplicate on a computer. This is the difference between a monster who works as an actual character in the story and one that’s merely a plot device. And if a monster movie succeeds or fails on the basis of how good its monster is, Ishiro Honda’s War of the Gargantuas is one of the greatest monster movies ever made.

The plot is… well, I’m sure you can guess. A giant monster attacks Japan, the army tries to fight it off, and scientists work to determine how to destroy it. As with most of the classic “kaiju” movies, science is to blame for creating the monster- in this case, an American scientist (played by Russ Tamblyn) who once created an ape-like hulk who later escaped into the wild. The characters usually refer to the monster as “Frankenstein,” although anyone who paid attention in Brit Lit will no doubt recall that “Frankenstein” was the doctor’s name, while his creation was “Frankenstein’s Monster” or “The Creature.” No matter- the monster’s out there now, and much effort is expended to take it down.

But suddenly… wait, what’s this? There are actually TWO Frankensteins! Of course, there’d kind of have to be, or else the title wouldn’t make much sense. Anyway, it seems the creature currently menacing the coastline of Japan is not the same creature as the escaped Frankenstein. The new Frankenstein (called Gailah) is the destructive one, while the one that originally escaped (now called Sanda) tries to stop him. At one point, Tamblyn helpfully explains that human cruelty apparently caused Sanda to lose a piece of his body, which eventually developed into Gailah. “It’s kind of like cloning,” he says, although it sounds more like budding to me. If there’s a subtext here, it’s that the man’s appetite for destruction will only sow more hatred and evil in the world. Needless to say, this development leaves the army at a bit of a loss, since they can’t risk creating more Frankensteins in their efforts to destroy the one they’re facing.

I know what you’re saying- what about the monsters? Well, they’re awesome, in large part because they’re not the godlike creatures you’ll find in many movies of this sort. Gailah is basically an overgrown baby, panicking at the sight of fire or bright light, injuring fairly easily for a being of his size. Meanwhile, while the Japanese army would prefer to simply rid themselves of both Frankensteins, Tamblyn and comely assistant Kumi Mizuno know that Santa is really a gentle soul. In my favorite shot of the film, Sanda slides down a mountain in slow-motion to rescue Mizuno, who he remembers from when he was (much) smaller.

What’s inescapable about the Frankensteins is how clumsy they are. They don’t leap around with a balletic grace, but instead lumber and lurch like, well, Frankenstein’s monster. When they fight, they stomp around, they occasionally miss their punches, they fall with a thud. And of course, they do plenty of damage to the city, both inadvertently and purposely. In the end, they take their battle out to sea, where they are presumed destroyed by the sudden emergence of a massive volcano (a volcano ex machina?). Yet it’s never quite clear if they’ve actually been destroyed. One yearns for a sequel, but alas, it never happened.

War of the Gargantuas has pretty much everything you could want from a Japanese monster movie, and nothing you don’t. There’s very little “human interest” in the movie, aside from a hint of a love story between Tamblyn and Mizuno. Instead, the movie gives you 90 minutes of monster mayhem, army battles, wanton destruction, and stern-faced scientists trying to puzzle out what it all means, all in glorious Tohoscope™ and accompanied by music by the great Akira Ifukube. Yes, it’s formulaic, but when the formula is done this well, it’s churlish to complain. If you like movies like this, War of the Gargantuas should be right up your alley. I know I enjoyed the hell out of it.

~~~~

Beginning this week, I’ve decided to switch the format of my Reviews By Requests columns. Rather than taking suggestions in the comments section, I’m going to start using a poll to determine my next Review By Request. Below, I’ve listed five noteworthy films I haven’t seen. I ask only that you, the readers, choose your favorite from this rather diverse bunch. So, what’ll it be? Andy Warhol’s two-projector art film? Monte Hellmann’s Warren Oates-starring B-movie favorite? Werner Herzog’s early documentary about a blind and deaf woman? The Vincente Minnelli/Rat Pack classic that has lent its name to the blog of Screengrab fave Glenn Kenny? Or Kon Ichikawa’s epic account of the 1964 Olympic Games? It’s up to you:

Which of the following should I review next? | BuzzDash polls

This poll will remain active through Friday, and whichever movie receives the most votes will be my next Review By Request. So feel free to stump for your favorite of the bunch in the comments section below, or even suggest a few titles for the special horror-themed Review By Request that will run the week of Halloween.

When Good Directors Go Bad?: The Frighteners (1996, Peter Jackson)

Paul Clark — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Today, Peter Jackson is best known to most audiences as one of Hollywood’s big-ticker filmmakers, the New Zealand visionary who was responsible for bringing Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to the big screen in rousing, ambitious fashion. But in 1996, he was still trying to make his way in Hollywood, with a handful of low-budget genre movies and the critically-acclaimed Heavenly Creatures to his name. He came to America in the hope of eventually making a big-budget remake of King Kong, a dream project of his since he first decided to become a filmmaker. But first, he had to make a name for himself in the American film industry, which he hoped to do with a horror movie/comedy like the ones that made his reputation in his native land. That movie was The Frighteners.

Trouble is, most critics weren’t on to Jackson’s game yet. Jackson’s early films such as Meet the Feebles, Bad Taste and Dead Alive had yet to make much headway with American moviegoers, so critics’ only point of comparison was Jackson’s relatively restrained true crime drama Heavenly Creatures. Those who wanted more of the same were sorely disappointed, and found Jackson’s latest film a loud, obnoxious bore. Roger Ebert’s review of the film was typical of this reaction, as he wrote: “One of the more excruciating experiences for any movie lover is to sit through a movie filled with frenetic nonstop action, in which, however, nothing of interest happens. The Frighteners is a film like that… Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners.”

But while those who were in the know were more receptive to the charms of The Frighteners- Mike D’Angelo wrote, “At last, a big-budget summer movie that actually delivers on its promise of entertaining escapist entertainment, without insulting the audience's intelligence in the process”- the film never really caught on even after the Lord of the Rings trilogy propelled Jackson to mainstream fame. And that’s a shame, because while The Frighteners doesn’t reach the frenzied heights of Jackson’s best work in the horror genre, it’s still a blast, especially if you’re a fan of his early films.

For one thing, to dismiss the film as Ebert does as merely being empty, frenetic action is to overlook the infectious strain of sick humor that runs through the film. Look at the character of Judge (played by John Astin), a ghost who’s been dead so long his body is literally falling to pieces. At least once, we see Judge’s jawbone fall to the floor, only to be snatched up by a spectral dog. But that doesn’t stop Judge from forging on with his life, even bursting into a museum exhibition to satisfy his sexual longing with a mummy. After doing the nasty so that his alive, ghost-wrangling pal Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) can see him- even though nobody else can- the satiated Judge turns to Frank and sighs, “I like it when they lie still like that.” How many big-studio summer movies would even attempt a joke like that? Very few, I’d wager.

And it’s this refusal to make nice that makes The Frighteners so much fun. Sure, Jackson had executive producer Robert Zemeckis (fresh off Forrest Gump) in his corner, but it’s still surprising how much of Jackson’s sensibility made it into the film intact. One of my favorite elements of the movie is the gleefully unhinged supporting work by Jeffrey Combs as Dammers, a very odd FBI agent. From Dammers’ initial entrance, Combs’ live-wire performance takes the film to a new and more exciting level. It’s the sort of performance most directors would discourage, citing the old saw that, when acting onscreen, “less is more.” But Combs’ work is so inspired and hilarious that it works magnificently in spite of flying in the face of conventional wisdom. Watch him in the scene where he interrogates Frank, as Combs chews up and spits out line after memorable line (my favorite: “What did *he* do? Piss on your Hush Puppies?”). Eventually, it’s all Fox can do with simply sit there and bury his head in his hands, as if to ask the audience, “what? Are you really still watching me?”

Best of all is the climactic sequence of the movie, in which Frank and his love interest Lucy (Trini Alvarado) are chased through an abandoned mental hospital by a deranged Dee Wallace Stone and her ghostly lover, an executed serial killer played by Jake Busey. On one level, it’s exciting to see Jackson’s talent firing on all cylinders, as he effortlessly cuts between past and present, with Frank seeing the murders that took place decades ago even as he is pursued by those very same killers today. But even in the midst of impressive wall-to-wall effects (provided of course by Jackson’s own Weta Digital), the film’s wicked sense of humor remains intact. If you don’t crack a smile when Wallace Stone picks up a pickaxe and declares, “I’m in the mood for a little vivisection,” then chances are you have no soul.

Through some miracle, the disastrous box-office and critical showing of The Frighteners didn’t completely torpedo Jackson’s career in America, and while it took a few years, Jackson even convinced New Line to pony up the dough for his massive Lord of the Rings trilogy. And the rest, as they say, is history. But as much as I love Jackson’s recent films, I do miss him making movies like The Frighteners, and every nod he makes to that side of his sensibility fills me with ghoulish glee. Until Jackson can use his clout to make another movie that fully recaptures that old feeling, there’ll always be The Frighteners, an underappreciated title on his filmography that definitely warrants a second look.

Blowtorch, Not Biff Tannen, Responsible For Back to the Future Disaster

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

According to the Associated Press, there was no disgruntled security guard involved in the Universal Studios fire this time around. Instead, the culprit responsible for the destruction of the back lot’s iconic Back to the Future clock tower set (as well as a King Kong tram tour exhibit and thousands of archived videos) was...bad luck. And possibly bad water pressure.

Workers at the studio had apparently been using a blowtorch (or blowtorches) to apply shingles to the roof of a movie set building façade, after which they waited around for an hour (per standard operating procedure) to make sure that nothing, y'know, caught fire and, uh...hold on, let me read that again...they were applying shingles to fake buildings with blowtorches? As opposed to...oh, I dunno...nails?

Hey, look, I’m no contractor...and I put together my parents’ garage door opener with a flamethrower, so what the heck do I know?

But, just so I’m clear on this: standard operating procedure is to apply shingles with a blowtorch, then stand around in the middle of the night for an hour to make sure the whole place doesn’t burn down? Sounds a little obtuse if you ask me...kinda like those poor bastards in March of the Penguins waddling 100 miles from the nearest source of food to mate, then standing in the middle of a blizzard balancing eggs on their flippers like contestants in some weird sadistic Japanese game show instead of just...y’know...mating near the food.

Anyway, the upshot is Universal had copies of all the videos that were destroyed, and the studio's devastated backlot New York streetscape, previously destroyed in the 1990 blaze and rebuilt, will now be rebuilt again (presumably with more garish, overpriced Trump slums, souvenir shops and Applebees).

Los Angeles County Fire Chief Michael Freeman said low water pressure hindered efforts to battle the flames, but the blaze was nevertheless contained well enough that Universal was able to reopen its theme park on Monday, and “tourists on the park's tram ride applauded firefighters as they drove past.” (Awwww!)

Yes...firemen RULE! (And, fortunately, none were seriously injured in the blaze.) Now, c'mon, kids...who's up for Backdraft?

Related Stories:

Universal Studios Fire Destroys Back To The Future Set; MTV Movie Awards Tragically Unaffected

Universal Studios Fire Destroys Back To The Future Set; MTV Movie Awards Tragically Unaffected

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I was living in Los Angeles in 1990 when a disgruntled security guard set fire to Universal Studios, causing $25 million dollars in damage and choking much of the San Fernando Valley in smoke.

History repeated itself on Sunday with another disastrous blaze on the famous back lot, only this time the destruction included a Gen-X touchstone: the Hill Valley clock tower set from the Back to the Future trilogy, where Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) tried to catch lightning in a flux capacitor in the first movie and raced around on a futuristic hover-skateboard in the sequel. The supercool animatronic King Kong that “attacked” passengers during the Universal tram ride was also destroyed.

Aside from Kong, nobody was injured in the conflagration, the cause of which is still under investigation.

The MTV Movie Awards were broadcast live from the adjacent Gibson (formerly Universal) Amphitheater less than 24 hours after the fire broke out (sometime around 4:30 A.M. Sunday morning). Fire footage and the full list of fake awards show winners are included after the jump:

2008 MTV MOVIE AWARDS

Best Movie

Transformers

Best Male Performance

Will Smith - I Am Legend

Best Female Performance

Ellen Page - Juno

Breakthrough Performance

Zac Efron - Hairspray

Best Comedic Performance

Johnny Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Best Kiss

Briana Evigan & Robert Hoffman - Step Up 2 the Streets

Best Villain

Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best Fight

Sean Faris vs. Cam Gigandet - Never Back Down

Best Summer Movie So Far

Iron Man

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 17-23, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Here we are on the verge of a three-day weekend – the perfect opportunity to catch up with the week in Screengrabbin’. Take that laptop out to the beach and dig in to one of our finest weeks ever in film-related snarkery:

All the Cannes news you can eat, including review roundups for Steven Soderbergh’s Che and Clint Eastwood's Changeling.

Speaking of Eastwood, Spike Lee has some words for him.

Something you may not know about Prince Caspian: It’s Some Goofy-Ass Shit.

Those guys in the raincoats in the back row of the theater? That’s us taking in The Sweet 16 Jailbait Movies.

Flashbacks to summers past: Yesterday’s Hits looks at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Summerfest ’08 launches with A Summer Place, and Summer of ’78 kicks off with Thank God It’s Friday.

Our Unwatchable journey through the IMDb Bottom 100 continues with the Aussie werewolves of Howling III, the strangely middle-aged juvenile delinquent of I Accuse My Parents, and the horny bikini babes of Horrors of Spider Island.

Grumpy Old Actresses square off in a 90-year feud.

Which giant ape movie is truly the King of Kong?

That sound you hear isn’t fingernails on a chalkboard – it’s OST: There Will Be Blood.

What’s Three More Terminator Movies between friends?

Whatever happened to Better Off Dead auteur Savage Steve Holland?

And finally, forget Uwe Boll – the worst filmmaker of our time is Albert Pyun.

Remake vs. Original: Kong vs. Kong vs. Kong

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

After marveling at the remarkably rendered 1930s New York of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, I got a mad craving to go back and revisit my first Kong...not the 1933 classic, but the 1976 version I saw as part of a long-ago birthday field trip, sitting uncomfortably close to my grandmother while naked Skull Island native boobies bounced gloriously on one of the big, wide screens of the late, lamented Westgate Cinema in beautiful, balmy Brockton, Massachusetts.

Even more recently, my wife rented the original as part of her own private ongoing Netflix survey course of film history, allowing me to compare all three apes in a cinematic steel cage match. Which film is The King of Kong? Let’s check the scorecard!

THE BEAST:

It’s the eternal question: stop-motion, CGI or a guy in a monkey suit? The original Kong was groundbreaking and iconic. Peter Jackson’s ape was fearsome and expressive and goofed around on an icy pond. And, as Dino De Laurentiis promised vis-à-vis his bicentennial version: “When Jaws dies, nobody cries. When Kong dies, they all cry.” To be honest, this race is too close to call, so I’ll go with the chimp that started it all. Advantage: Original.

THE BEAUTY:

Jessica Lange, God bless her, is automatically disqualified for playing a character named “Dwan.” Naomi Watts delivered a charming, well-rounded performance as Ann Darrow, generating about a hundred times more chemistry with her simian co-star than she did with Sean Penn in 21 Grams. But as good as she was, Dr. Frank-N-Furter didn’t sing about Naomi Watts in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He sang about the one-and-only iconic Fay Wray. Advantage: Original.

THE HERO:

A little Adrian Brody goes a long way for me, and I don’t remember much about Bruce Cabot’s performance as Jack Driscoll in the original (other than it was perfectly fine). But, c’mon...Jeff Bridges on Skull Island in a crazy Amish beard? The Dude abides. Advantage: 1976.

THE SHOWMAN:

Jack Black gave a fine, relatively understated performance as Carl Denham in the 2005 version, and Robert Armstrong totally owns the classic line, “It was beauty killed the beast.” But I have to say I’m partial to Charles Grodin’s oilman turned showman for providing the classic Kong story with a truly hissable villain...plus he’s the only one who gets squashed by a giant ape foot. Advantage: 1976.

SKULL ISLAND:

The 1976 version featured the aforementioned naked breastices, and Kong’s battle with the dinosaurs in Peter Jackson’s remake was insanely exciting, but the original directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack achieved the same level of wonder and excitement with a quarter of the technology. Bonus points for Noble Johnson’s portrayal of the Skull Island chief, the only truly dignified, humane and memorable “native” character in any version of Kong. Advantage: Original.

THE SHOWDOWN:

Kong’s original battle with the biplanes atop the Empire State Building is classic movie magic, and Kong’s battle with helicopters on and around the Twin Towers now sadly packs an emotional wallop it didn’t originally possess, but I could have spent hours drinking in Peter Jackson’s obsessively detailed CGI New York, even without the breathtaking action in the foreground. Advantage: 2005.

And so, after tallying the votes, the winner is...ORIGINAL!

Stay tuned for next week’s exciting Original vs. Remake smackdown (in honor of the release of The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD box set): Sinatra's Eleven vs. Clooney's Eleven!

All-Night Mockbuster Marathon

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT

It’s time for another all-night marathon, so put on a pot of coffee, find the sweet spot on the couch and join me for a nocturnal journey into the shadowy world of the mockbuster. (If you’re not sure what a mockbuster is, here’s a handy primer.)

12 midnight. We begin with the latest mockbuster from the good people at the Asylum, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Lost Skulls. I’ll bet you can guess which blockbuster-in-waiting occasioned the release of this one. Although the character of Allan Quatermain actually predates the creation of Indiana Jones by nearly a century, his reappearance now is a case of history repeating itself. Temple of Skulls is based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines, as was the 1985 film starring Richard Chamberlain, a mockbuster before they had a word for it. (Back then, we charitably called it a Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff.) This doesn’t stop the producers from claiming that Allan Quatermain inspired Indiana Jones, which is partially true but certainly misleading in this context. In any case, there is no temple of skulls in the movie, so you can bet it was retitled once Lucasfilm announced the name of the latest Indiana Jones flick. Anyway, as Temple of Skulls begins, two rugged prospector types in South Africa find the map to King Solomon’s mines. Not trusting each other, they split it in half to ensure they’ll stick together. Shortly thereafter they are attacked by Zulus and the map pieces blow away. Some time later, rugged great white hunter Quatermain (Sean Michael) gets his hands on one half.

12:20 am. I’m trying to figure out when this movie is set. We’ve got coal-burning trains, ladies in frilly frocks, black dudes in hip-hop hats and Nazi references. So I guess…some time in the last 70 years or so? Anyway, Quatermain has teamed up with Sir Henry and Lady Anna, a wealthy couple with the other half of the map. They are being pursued by Quatermain’s arch-nemesis, a scenery chewer straight out of an old Hammer horror movie.

12:30 am. Here we have a five-mile-an-hour chase between a truck and a locomotive engine. It’s like someone stuck a Monty Python sketch in the middle of the movie.

12:45 am. Our heroes dodge CGI bugs, then encounter a (real) rhino. This scene is edited Survivor-style; we have no idea if the rhino is even in the same hemisphere as Quatermain and the gang.

1:00 am. In fine National Geographic tradition, Quatermain and company are captured by bare-breasted natives. There is a bizarre CGI Zulu head-removal ritual.

1:15 am. I was expecting pretty much constant action and zero plot from Temple of Skulls, but that’s not actually the case. For all I know, it’s a reasonably faithful adaptation. I must give the Asylum credit for scenery at least; the movie is purty to look at.

1:40 am. Let us move on to King of the Lost World, another literary adaptation posing as a recent blockbuster. It’s loosely based on A. Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, with the addition of “King” to the title and a picture of a big scary ape on the cover to fool drunk people at Blockbuster into renting it. The box also trumpets an appearance by Bruce Boxleitner – star of Scarecrow and Mrs. King! Well, that’ll bring the kids into the tent. Anyway, King opens with a plane crashing onto an island, announcing its intentions to rip off not only King Kong and Jurassic Park but also Lost. This is confirmed when we see a stewardess trapped up in a tree. Three minutes into the movie, a giant gorilla snatches her. We won’t be seeing him again for a while.

2:00 am. Giant bug attack!

2:10 am. There’s a glitch in the DVD and I have to jump ahead five minutes, at which point maggots are being used to heal a woman’s wound. So glad I didn’t miss that.

2:25 am. Our heroes find a fighter jet with an active nuke. The mysterious Bruce Boxleitner knows how to hot-wire it.

2:40 am. Things are happening now! One dude gets impaled by a giant scorpion. The others are taken hostage by skull-face painted natives. There are boobies! And lesbian natives!

2:50 am. A flurry of terrible CGI: we’ve got pterodactyls, plus the giant ape finally returns, though he looks blurry and pixilated. (Another reason CGI must die: think about how much progress in giant robot ape technology could have been made by now.) Boxleitner reveals he was sent to disarm the nuke, which really makes no sense, especially once he explains that the bomb has a limited range of 300 yards. Anyway, they blow up the ape real good. Okay, I’m lying. It’s not real good.

3:00 am. It’s time for The Da Vinci Treasure. Here’s how you know these folks at the Asylum aren’t completely shameless: the film concerns a forensic archeologist and his search for the Da Vinci codex. See – they could have called this The Da Vinci Codex! Maybe they didn’t quite have the grapes for that (though they did make The Transmorphers, unreviewed here – I’ve got my limits too, junior.)

3:15 am. Anyway, the main players here are a haggard C. Thomas Howell as our hero Michael Archer, an earring-sporting Lance Henriksen as the villainous Dr. John Coven, and Nicole Sherwin as your typically hot linguist/theologian. Throughout the movie, director Peter Mervis (Snakes on a Train) employs an annoying effect that kept making me think there was something wrong with my DVD player. It’s a sort of freeze-frame/flash/jumpcut deal – like someone mentions Jesus, and suddenly there’s a flash of light, a whoosh, quick shots of a crucifix and the Last Supper, and then back to the scene. I guess this pumps up the excitement level, as if looking for hidden clues on the Shroud of Turin weren’t exciting enough!

3:20 am. We have our first mention of the Knights Templar! Also, the Shroud of Turin is apparently kept in the basement of the Alamo.

3:30 am. And Da Vinci invented 3-D glasses, in case you were wondering.

3:45 am. In what must be the most expensive scene in any of these Asylum movies, there is a smash-em-up car chase through the streets of London (or San Diego, whatever) involving a tour bus. Fortunately they didn’t have to pay the guy playing the Casio on the soundtrack too much.

4:15 am. Apparently I nodded off during the big revelation scene in The Da Vinci Treasure. I’m sure it changed the face of Christianity forever, but there’s no time to go back! Let’s wrap this up with an old school mockbuster to cleanse the palate, shall we? Of course I’m talking about 1988’s timeless E.T. ripoff, Mac and Me. We begin on another planet, where a family of aliens is accidentally sucked into the vacuum hose of a rover from Earth. The aliens, I guess, are meant to be cute, but to me they look like giant sea monkeys or very confused burn victims.

4:30 am. After the alien family is brought to Earth, the smallest alien, or Mysterious Alien Creature, or MAC (you see?), hitches a ride with a single mother and her two sons moving to California. They don’t notice him, but he keeps getting into mischief, and the youngest, wheelchair-bound brother Eric keeps getting blamed for it.

4:45 am. Eric plummets off a cliff in his wheelchair and is rescued by Mac. When he tells the doctor what happened, the doc diagnoses him with “schizofreakia” and decides to dope him up. Ah, the 80s.

5:00 am. Breakdancing! At McDonald’s! With Ronald McDonald and football players and – don’t take my word for it, see for yourself:

5:15 am. By now everyone believes Mac exists, and they help reunite him with his family members, who are trapped in a mineshaft out by those windmills from Rain Man. The kids nurse the aliens back to life with nourishing sips of Coca-Cola. I tell ya, this movie is Morgan Spurlock’s worst nightmare.

5:30 am. Of course, government agents are in hot pursuit of Mac, and in their attempts to capture him they manage to blow up an entire mall and kill Eric in the process. Fortunately, Mac and his family are able to suck the death right out of him. Apparently the aliens don’t hold their ill treatment by the agents against their government, as the movie concludes with the whole family becoming U.S. citizens. A final ominous title card claims “We’ll Be Back.” We’re still waiting. And by “we,” I mean “not me.” Good night.

Previously: All-Night Bigfoot Movie Marathon

Original vs. Remake: The Thomas Crown Affair

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:30:00 GMT

So, a few months ago, my wife rearranged our Netflix queue in chronological order, from the dawn of cinema (circa Intolerance) to the present. And, despite the regrettable consequence that it will now be many, many weeks before Bubba Ho-Tep arrives on our doorstep, the experiment has resulted in a fairly interesting history of filmmaking, from silents to the French New Wave and beyond.

We’ve only just reached Norman Jewison’s 1968 hipster heist flick The Thomas Crown Affair, setting the stage for a little mano-a-mano tag-team compare-and-contrast between the original (starring Steve McQueen as the titular playboy thief and Faye Dunaway as a sexy insurance investigator) and the 1999 John McTiernan remake starring Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo.

So which version takes "the crown"? Let’s check the scorecard!

POINTS FOR STYLE

Glossy 1990s production values are no match for the split-screens, miniskirts and go-go glamour of 1968. Plus, the Original was filmed on location in Boston, as opposed to (yawn) Manhattan. Advantage: Original.

SOUNDTRACK

The Original swings with groovy cocktail music and xylophones, though both versions are saddled with the dopey, annoying theme song, “The Windmills of Your Mind” (performed by Sting in the ‘90s and Anthony Newley wannabe Noel Harrison in the ‘60s)...but the Pierce Brosnan version features a final heist scored to Nina Simone’s insanely awesome “Sinnerman,” so there’s really no contest. Advantage: Remake.

HERO

Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown is considerably more likeable than his 1968 counterpart, and Steve McQueen’s performance is marred by repeated spasms of unnerving fake laughter, but c’mon. He’s friggin’ Steve McQueen. Advantage: Original.

EYE CANDY

Faye Dunaway is certainly an iconic presence, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, but does she dance a bra-less tango in a sparkly see-through dress? No...she just fondles chess pieces and licks her flesh-colored nails. Which is also kinda hot, at least until I remember Mommie Dearest. Advantage: Remake.

PLOT

For all the style, there’s not a lot of substance or suspense in the 1968 edition: even the central heist boils down to little more than a bunch of guys in hats pointing guns, grabbing bags of loot and hightailing it out of the city in an ugly wood-paneled station wagon. Not that depth and memorable thematic resonance is one of the Remake’s strong suits, but it does feature a twisty caper that’s unpredictable, prankish and fun. Advantage: Remake.

Thus, in my first Original vs. Remake smackdown, the winner is...REMAKE!

(And stay tuned for the upcoming super-heavyweight steel cage grudge match between 1930s King Kong, fake 1930s remake Kong and 1970s remake Kong, with a very special guest appearance by The Dude.)

In Other Blogs: Seitz and Sounds

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

If you felt the film blog world shift a little on its axis this week, it’s probably because The House Next Door founder and proprietor Matt Zoller Seitz has departed for greener pastures. Of all things, Seitz has decided to concentrate on making his own films. Can you imagine? Why, if we all did that, there’d be no one left to snark about our work.

Seitz says goodbye with a lengthy interview with new House Next Door honcho Keith Uhlich, in which he discusses his plans as well as his lifelong love of movies. “There was this thing called The Scholastic Book Club, which I guess they still have because my daughter brings home the sheets for me to fill out. They had a book on the making of King Kong and I believe it was available before the movie had even come out. And I ordered it, along with some other things, and when it came I just read it from front to back. That was the first instance I can think of of my wanting to find out how movies were made. I don’t think I really knew anything about how movies were made. I just thought they were these things that kind of magically appeared on the screen when you went to the theater.”

Tributes to Seitz have been proliferating ever since his announcement. At Scanners, Jim Emerson has assembled his own personal “best of Seitz” retrospective, and shows the good taste to include this snippet from “McCabe and Mr. Milch”: “To some degree, nearly all of Altman’s films are anatomies of community. Ditto Deadwood, which week to week showcases a panoramic concentration that recalls Altman at the top of his game. Like Altman, Milch is not content to fixate on the plight of one individual -- a fundamental creative choice that puts both men temperamentally at odds with much of American popular culture. Both Altman and Milch prefer to see the big picture, the pointillist mural that takes shape when an artist asks the audience to take a few steps back from the canvas. They study human constellations comprised of distinct human beings who embrace different religions, inhabit different social strata, imbibe different substances, muse on their own pet obsessions and pursue their own strange agendas, all the while remaining largely oblivious to their impact on everyone else. Both Altman and Milch are not just storytellers. They are dramatic anthropologists, devising a collective organism in order to scrutinize it.”

At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells offers his own, uh, “tribute,” I guess. Maybe it’s tongue in cheek. Who knows. “Seitz seems to think that a film critic's life doesn't provide enough in the way of cleansing ‘happiness moments,’ like what some people get from walking in the woods or watching basketball or going bowling or murdering a deer in the forest with a high-powered rifle. Well, it's not supposed to do that...hello? If you've been lucky enough to be called to the profession of film criticism (or any profession that most people are unable to do for lack of talent or persistence or both), then you do that thing until you die at your desk -- simple. And no moaning.” Be sure to read the comments if you’re up for a good old fashioned flame war.

Of course, when one door opens, another window closes, or something like that. In other words, Jonathan Rosenbaum, late of the Chicago Reader, has now joined our little club with the self-explanatory JonathanRosenbaum.com. “Here’s the basic plan: Although I’m hoping that this site will grow and sprout more features in the weeks and months ahead, including links and other items, for the time being it will consist of two weekly features: (1) a reprint of an older text of mine (in alternate weeks, this will consist of a piece of mine that may not otherwise be readily available, and a piece of mine formerly published in the Chicago Reader between 1987 and 2007), and (2) a brief list of recent publications and upcoming events.”

And finally, it wouldn’t be the week in blogs without another installment of List-o-Mania. In honor of Iron Head or whatever his name is, here are Ten Superheroes Who Deserve Their Own Movie from Film School Rejects. I think we can all agree, now more than ever, the time for She-Hulk has come. “Okay, I’ll admit that I never really read the comic, but what red-blooded American male could say no to the buff green beauty? The sexy Maxim cover shoot alone should be reason to make this film (and if The Incredible Hulk does well this summer, it could be a go).”

Rep Report (February 28 - March 6)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Sunday, March 2 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of King Kong's debut appearance in New York City, and to honor the event, Film Forum is running the 1933 classic for two matinees, one day only. Those attending the 1:00 P.M. screening are automatically eligible to stick around and participate in the Fay Wray Scream-alike Contest, to be judged by a crack panel of experts that includes Film Forum repertory program director Bruce Goldstein, film critic Elliott Stein, and Ms. Wray's actress daughter, Susan Riskin. One lucky, leather-lunged winner will receive a two-disc DVD set of the movie, a one-year membership to Film Forum, (trust me on this — if nothing else, it pays for itself!), and a romantic trip for two the top of the Empire State Building. Jeez, you'd think it would be thrill enough just to get to be in the same room as Elliott Stein...

Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2008" (February 29 - March 9) kicks off with Claude Lelouch's Romain de gare with Fanny Ardent and Audrey Dana, introduced by the director. There are also new films by Sandrine Bonnaire, Claude Miller, Sophie Marceau, and — this sounds interesting — Fear(s) of the Dark, a black-and-white animated omnibus film that incorporates material from such comics artists as Charles Burns and Lorenzo Mattotti.

SAN FRANCISCO: "The Unabridged Coen Brothers" (February 28 - March 2) at the Castro was apparently assembled for the benefit of anyone who's just landed here from Mars and is curious about these fellows who just won the Oscar. Of course, it might also be useful to any Coen fans who see this as a fine time to have themselves a wallow. Includes Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, and O Brother Where Art Thou?, which, it says here, includes "Southern folklore, slapstick stunts, cinematic tributes, religious ritual, political satire, and social commentary." All that and dancing Klansmen too!

SEATTLE: The Grand Illusion Cinema brings back four of "the No-Nonsense Films of Phil Karlson in the '50s". Karlson was a specialist in hard-nosed, low-budget action noirs whose resume of grungily efficient little knuckle-busters makes Don Siegel look like Busby Berkeley. (After decades of scuffling from one small-time gig to the next, Karlson hit the jackpot with his next-to-last picture, the rabble-rousing 1973 blockbuster Walking Tall, which he had the foresight to own a piece of.) Starting February 29, the theater is showing the fifties films Five Against the House with Kim Novak and Brian Keith and The Brothers Rico with Richard Conte; on March 6, it trades them in for the Western Gunman's Walk and the newspaper melodrama Scandal Sheet with Broderick Crawford.

The Rep Report (February 1-7)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Since last Thanksgiving, Village audiences have been turning out in force at the Film Forum for I'm Not There, so the theater shouldn't have too much trouble drawing an audience for a week-long showing (February 1-7) of D. A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back, the documentary record of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the United Kingdom, complete with Joan Baez singing away in her own little bubble, Dylan's notorious manager Albert Grossman auditioning for Tony Hendra's role in This Is Spinal Tap (and maybe Joe Pesci's role in GoodFellas), drop-in appearances by Donovan and Alan Price, and one of the all-time great pre-MTV music videos, with Dylan standing in the street flipping cue cards while Allen Ginsberg standing off to the sidelines looking as if he knows deep and ancient truths, even if he was really just wondering about the location of the buffet table. Released in 1967, Pennebaker's movie established Dylan as an icon of movie cool, much more effectively than his early attempts at actual movie "acting" (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Renaldo and Clara). If you've never seen it, you'll want to check it out to decide for yourself how the man himself compares with Cate Blanchett.

On February 1, as part of its "Golden Silents" program, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is hosting a special one-night event, a rare screening of Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, a 1927, sixty-seven-minute film by the men who made King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The simple story about a family farm in a jungle setting is a pretext for the exciting natural wildlife footage; the movie includes fights with big cats and a bang-up elephant stampede — make no mistake, animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture. But its mixture of awe in the face of natural beauty and man-on-safari edginess will help you understand why everyone in Hollywood understood that the jungle-raping showman in King Kong was a Cooper self-portrait. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by the Alloy Orchestra.

Location, Location, Location: Times Square

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:00:00 GMT

When we think of New Year's Eve, we think of short-lived resolutions, ill-advised groping and hangovers that would cripple King Kong. But we also think of the lighted, bejeweled ball dropping in Times Square as an increasingly withered Dick Clark counts down the seconds until the new year's arrival. So on this final day of 2007, we can think of no better way to kick off a new recurring feature dedicated to notable locations and their portrayal on film than with Times Square. Here are a few of our favorite movie moments set - though not necessarily shot - in that ever-evolving hub of humanity.

The bygone glamour of the '30s and '40s is evoked in Radio Days (1987), Woody Allen's most nostalgic work, which concludes on a nightclub rooftop overlooking Times Square on New Year's Eve, 1944. It's a set - certainly one of the most beguiling ones in the Allen filmography, all colorful neon signs and cigarette billboards blowing smoke as snow begins to fall. This era's Times Square is recreated in another spectacular set - albeit for a less wistful moment - in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong, as the ape escapes his "Eighth Wonder of the World" display on Broadway and goes on a rampage:

The square's later incarnation as a seedy pit of sin provides the backdrop for two counterculture classics. In Midnight Cowboy (1969), country boy Joe Buck has a rude awakening when his dreams of the high life as a top-dollar New York hustler are dashed in the Square's filthy hotels and run-down porno theaters. For Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976), the Square is no less than hell on earth; his late-night cruise through rain-slicked streets oozing steam and bad vibes remains the iconic image of Times Square from this period.

The latest version of Times Square is often described as "Disneyfied," and it is indeed a cleaned-up, corporate intersection of Gap stores and ESPN Zones. It does retain the outsized billboards and extravagant neon of decades past, however, and as this clip from the otherwise regrettable Vanilla Sky (2001) shows, it still has potential for creepiness:

The Square is used to similar effect as a deserted wasteland in I Am Legend, although this Times Square of the near future, crumbling and overgrown with weeds, is entirely computer generated. Still, we have the feeling Travis Bickle would approve.

Mockbusters

Peter Smith — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Asylum is a small Hollywood production company with a niche. Its recent titles include The Da Vinci Treasure, Snakes on a Train, and Transmorphers. As Rolf Potts explains, that last one might be mistaken, ideally by someone on a late-night raid at Blockbusters, for Transformers, except that the Asylum product "has no recognizable actors, no merchandising tie-ins and a garbled sound mix. Also unlike Transformers, it has cheap special effects and a subplot involving lesbians." Potts calls films like these, which are designed to be viewed by people with another, better-known movie on their minds, as "mockbusters." David Michael Latt, the company's co-founder, calls them "tie-ins", though that term has traditionally been used by people who were actually working together on a mass-marketed product and not by people who were, in effect, letting the big studios unknowingly do their marketing for them. Latt explains that Anchor, which has been around since 1997, just kind of tripped into this; they had made their own cheapo adaptation of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, starring C. Thomas Howell, and they noticed that, when Steven Spielberg's own big-time movie of that same name and provenance hit DVD racks, it didn't hurt their sales. Soon, Asylum was making King of the Lost World, starring Bruce Boxleitner and Steve Railsback and featuring a DVD cover with a picture of a big-ass gorilla, which was timed to appear at the same time as Peter Jackson's King Kong. "I’m not trying to dupe anybody," Latt tells Potts. "I’m just trying to get my films watched." And the only way he can do that is by duping people. But at least he's keeping Steve Railsback off the streets. — Phil Nugent